NASHVILLE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — The governor of Tennessee has signed legislation that defines sex as binary and biological in state law and allows teachers to reject the use of “preferred pronouns” with their students.
Last week, Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed into law two bills that defend the true definition of sex and prevent teachers from being forced to participate in gender ideology in the classroom. Both pieces of legislation were signed on Wednesday, May 17.
SB 1440 amends the Tennessee Code to include a statewide definition of sex, countering the lie permeating the country that human beings can choose whether they are men or women in total disregard of biological reality.
“As used in this code, ‘sex’ means a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth and evidence of a person’s biological sex,” the bill states. “’Evidence of a person’s biological sex’ includes, but is not limited to, a government-issued identification document that accurately reflects a person’s sex listed on the person’s original birth certificate.”
The law is set to take effect on July 1, 2023.
SB 466 also challenges gender ideology by prohibiting teachers from being forced to use a student’s “preferred pronouns” if they don’t align with the child’s biological sex. The bill states that “teachers and employees of public schools and LEAs [local education agencies] do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression while at work,” thus providing them with the right to refuse to use pronouns of the opposite sex for students.
Further, the law declares that a teacher or school employee “should never be compelled to affirm a belief with which the teacher or employee disagrees.”
The law, which went into effect upon its signing, states that employees within the education system are not required “to use a student’s preferred pronoun when referring to the student if the preferred pronoun is not consistent with the student’s biological sex” and are not “civilly liable for using a pronoun that is consistent with the biological sex of the student to whom the teacher or employee is referring, even if the pronoun is not the student’s preferred pronoun.”
Additionally, those who refuse to use pronouns for a student that contradict the child’s sex may not be “subject to an adverse employment action for not using a student’s preferred pronoun.”
The two laws are the latest instances of Tennessee’s actions to fight back against gender ideology and its attack on vulnerable children and individual freedom. Last year, Gov. Lee enacted a ban on gender-confused men competing against women in college sports. In March, he signed legislation banning minors from undergoing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for so-called “gender transitions” and prohibiting them from attending sexualized events such as drag shows.
Tennessee’s ban on child mutilation came weeks before a gender-confused woman massacred three 9-year-old children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville.
More than 12 states across the country have taken similar steps and banned child mutilation, while another four have restricted so-called “gender transitions” for minors.
Earlier this year, the Kansas legislature also enacted a bill codifying the definition of biological sex as male and female rather than caving to the narrative that sex and gender are “fluid” concepts.
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