Canadian Catholic high school junior Josh Alexander has insisted on his religious right to believe God created two genders, for which he was suspended from school, then arrested when he tried to return.
Appearing on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” this weekend, Alexander said that the ordeal began last year when “female students complained to me that they were concerned because males were using their washrooms.”
“This turned into a debate at the school. I stated my opinion on it, and I used Scripture to back it up,” Alexander said.
“Males do not belong in female washrooms is our message,” Josh said at the time.
“Protect the girls from this evil narrative. Stop depriving our students of a healthy and natural environment. ‘God made them male and female: Mark 10:6,’” he said in a social media post.
Josh has also been accused of calling transgender students by their “dead names” (names they used before transitioning) and of arguing in classroom discussions that there are only two sexes.
Refusing to back down on the essential biblical difference between men and women, Alexander was eventually suspended from school and arrested when he tried to go back.
“They removed me from the building for the remainder of the year and, when I attempted to attend class, I was arrested and charged,” he told Carlson.
Alexander said he pointed to the school’s Christian identity, but school administrators refused to hear him out, arguing instead that his presence would be detrimental to the “physical and mental well-being” of trans students.
On receiving his suspension, Josh filed an appeal with his school board, insisting that the punishment constitutes discrimination against his religious beliefs.
Josh “cannot, due to his sincere religious beliefs, knowingly speak a falsehood, such as acknowledging the fiction that people can change from male to female (or vice-versa),” wrote his lawyer, James S.M. Kitchen, in an email to the school’s principal.
“As a matter of his Christian beliefs, which happen to be consistent with biological truths regarding gender, Mr. Alexander believes all human beings, except in rare circumstances of developmental abnormality, are made by God as either immutably male or female,” Kitchen said.
Liberty Coalition Canada, a Christian conservative organization with which Kitchen is affiliated, posted a statement on its website saying:
Josh not only has a right to express himself during class discussions and through public forums, he also has a right to not be discriminated against by his school for his sincere religious beliefs. Being suspended and excluded from classes is the height of discrimination.
Kitchen appeared with Alexander on Tucker Carlson’s show Friday, where he noted Canada offered “limited” legal recourse for representing Alexander’s free speech rights because of its “much weaker” constitution than that of the United States.
“There seems to be, culturally and legally, much less respect for individual rights and freedoms and much more interest in government having the power to do what it wants,” Kitchen said.
“But there is legal recourse to the Ontario Human Rights Commission in this case … we think there’s been religious discrimination on the basis of Josh’s Christian religious beliefs, so we’re going to file a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission,” he added.