BOISE, Idaho (LifeSiteNews) – Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law this week two bills to directly counter transgender ideology within the state. The first is a pronoun law assuring that government employees and public school teachers use pronouns that accord with a person’s biological sex and the second is a legal definition of sex that acknowledges “(i)n human beings, there are two and only two sexes: male and female.”
On Monday, April 8, Little signed HB 538, which prohibits compulsory so-called “gender language,” protecting government employees and public school teachers in particular from any adverse actions for using pronouns of a person in accord with the person’s biological sex.
The new law states, “The Legislature finds that despite the United States Supreme Court’s clear holding that compelled speech offends the constitution, government actors across the State of Idaho and the United States as a whole are not vigilantly protecting the people against such compelled speech.”
There are increasing pressures by state government actors to compel public employees, as well as students in public schools, to communicate certain preferred personal titles and pronouns that many such employees and students do not prefer to communicate. Specifically, to compel the use of preferred personal titles and pronouns that do not correspond with the biological sex of the individual seeking to be referred to by such preferred personal titles.
To protect the people of Idaho against unlawful compelled speech, the Legislature finds it expedient to codify into Idaho law a prohibition on any governmental entity in the State of Idaho from compelling any public employee or public school student to communicate preferred personal titles and pronouns that do not correspond with the biological sex of the individual seeking to be referred to by such titles or pronouns. Such prohibition is essential to ensure that the constitutional right to free speech of every person in the State of Idaho is respected.
The law, which takes effect on July 1, applies to all public employees throughout Idaho, including police, public school teachers and staff, and students. Teachers must use students’ pronouns that accord with biological sex unless given parental permission to the contrary. And if any government employee or student is punished for using pronouns that are in accord with a person’s biological sex rather than preferred pronouns, they are entitled to sue for damages in civil court within two years.
RELATED: New Idaho law protects adoption, foster care agencies against religious discrimination by state
Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Matt Sharp, director of the ADF Center for Public Policy, said in a statement regarding the new law, “No one should lose their job or face punishment at school for declining to say something they believe is false. Words and language carry meaning, and when used properly, they tell the truth about reality, feelings, and beliefs. Yet forcing individuals to say things that are untrue — such as inaccurate names, pronouns, and titles — imposes real harm on the speaker.”
Sharp continued, “In no world is it acceptable for schools to force good teachers out of a job all for the sake of promoting gender ideology to vulnerable children. Now and always, there are only two sexes — male and female — and denying this basic truth only hurts kids. With this legislation, Idaho is rightfully stepping into the gap to protect children and freedom of conscience. We applaud the Idaho Legislature for its leadership and Gov. Little for signing this bill to safeguard essential constitutional freedoms. All of society benefits when freedom of speech and conscience flourish.”
Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, a Christian political advocacy group, praised the bill for protecting teachers from ideologically driven pressures that threaten the classroom.
Conzatti said in a news release, “Even in school districts with no written compelled pronoun policy, educators feel pressure from administrators, parents and students to use preferred pronouns, and these teachers rightly fear what might happen if they continue disregarding such demands.”
RELATED: Idaho asks Supreme Court to let it enforce ban on ‘sex changes’ for children
On Tuesday, April 9, Gov. Little also signed into law a Definition of Sex bill that affirms “there are two and only two sexes,” and that biological fact will be recognized in law in Idaho. The new law affirms that “in no case is an individual’s sex determined by stipulation or self identification.”
The legislation is perhaps the most direct legal rejection of transgender ideology, addressing in the text of the legislation the “increasing confusion about the definition of sex as a biological truth and its relationship to concepts and terms, including but not limited to gender, gender identity, gender role, gender expression, and experienced gender.”
The law states, “In human beings, there are two, and only two, sexes: male and female. Every individual is either male or female. An individual’s sex can be observed or clinically verified at or before birth. Rare disorders of sexual development are not exceptions to the binary nature of sex. In no case is an individual’s sex determined by stipulation or self identification.”
There is increasing confusion about the definition of sex as a biological truth and its relationship to concepts and terms, including but not limited to gender, gender identity, gender role, gender expression, and experienced gender. Confusion and ambiguities surrounding the definitions of sex, male, female, and related terms can hinder individual efforts to enjoy equal treatment under the law. Legal equality of the two sexes does not imply that the sexes are identical to each other or are the same in every respect.
With respect to the two sexes, separate facilities, housing or sleeping arrangements, or sports teams, programs, or leagues established because of or organized according to physical differences between the sexes does not constitute unequal treatment under the law. Physical differences between males and females are enduring, and the two sexes are not fungible.
Brandon Showalter, a Christian Post journalist and host of the Generation Indoctrination documentary podcast who has extensively worked with broken families whose children were manipulated into attempting to “change” their sex, told LifeSiteNews in comments on the new definition of sex law that it challenges what trans activists have really been working for all along, “the abolition of sex.”
“With respect to the legislation passed in Idaho — and I know it’s being considered in other states — contrary to the claims of trans activists, this movement has always been about the abolition of sex,” Showalter said. “They can talk a great game about changing gender and not sex. But with) everything trans activists say, the inverse is true. The fact that legislators have had to define sex by genotype shows the length to which activists have gone to subvert reality in pursuit of impossible ends. It is a testament to the strange times we live in that lawmakers even have to consider defining basic reality as it really is.”
WATCH: In-depth analysis of the ‘de-transition’ movement
Regarding Idaho’s pronoun law, Showalter insisted, “Any efforts to anchor policy in reality can only be a good thing. It cannot help but have spillover effects into every realm of public life. This is an epistemological crisis. How we know what we know is directly correlated to the integrity of our language. The question becomes, how will this be challenged? And what will activists do to subvert even this? Because they will probably try something.”
“Reality is knowable, but the fact that you have to assert it legislatively shows the crisis of reality that we are in. Let’s make Orwell fiction again,” he said.
RELATED
‘From the depths of hell’: Inside the profound evil of transgender ideology
Is a major cultural shift against transgenderism already underway?
Why is the transgender movement so powerful and how do we fight back? Pro-family journalist explains