“I am Shua. This is a unique name. And it ends with a vowel, ‘a,’ that is traditionally feminine in many languages,” said Wilmot in a nearly one-hour video that he and Zelaya posted on YouTube shortly after they were released last month. “If you get an email from me and you don’t know who I am, you probably won’t know how I’m gendered.”
The ongoing US culture wars over sexual preferences, gender IDs and transgender rights have engulfed politics, school campuses and many other areas of public and private life. At least 17 Republican-led states severely restrict gender-based care. Debates continue to rage in some communities about school curricula that address sexual orientation or gender identity. And pickets sprung up outside public libraries hosting “drag story hours.”
Meanwhile, controversies swirl on campuses with religious affiliations. The recent firing prompted more than 700 Houghton alumni to sign a petition in protest.
In Northwest, 16 plaintiffs are suing Seattle Pacific University, a Christian liberal arts college, to challenge the school’s employment policy that bars people in same-sex relationships from full-time jobs.
In New York City, LGBTQ students challenged Yeshiva University’s decision to ban their student-run club on campus.
Paul Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, a 2-year-old advocacy group for LGBTQ students at publicly funded religious colleges and universities, said actions like this cause despair.
“There is a backlash against the rise of LGBTQ rights,” he said, and not just in “white evangelical Christianity in the South…
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ students against the US Department of Education who claimed it failed to protect them against discrimination at universities. which is related to religion receiving federal money.
Houghton University, an 800-student campus 60 miles (96 kilometers) southeast of Buffalo, says it offers a “Christ-centered education in the liberal arts and sciences.”
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Saturday, the university said it cannot speak publicly about personnel matters, but “it has not terminated an employment relationship based solely on use of pronouns in staff email signatures.”
The university said it previously asked employees to remove “anything unnecessary,” including Bible quotes, from email signatures.
The university also shared with AP an email outlining the new policy that was sent to staff. The memo warned employees against using politically divisive and inflammatory language in communications bearing the Houghton name. They were also ordered to use standardized signature styles and prohibited the use of pronouns.
The statement also included a copy of a letter sent by President Wayne D. Lewis Jr. of the university to the students.
“I will not ask you to agree or support every decision I make,” Lewis wrote. “But I humbly ask that you resist the temptation to reduce Houghton’s decision-making to simple and convenient political stories of our time.”
Zelaya said she received an email in the fall from administrators saying the school ordered changes to colors, fonts and other aspects of the email to help the school maintain branding consistency.
He complied, he said, but kept his pronouns in his signature, calling it a “standard industry practice” to do so.
In the dismissal letters given to Wilmot and Raegan Zelaya, copies of which they shared on social media, the university wrote that the firing was “a result of your refusal to remove pronouns from your email signature contrary to institutional policy .”
In a video posted on Facebook, Zelaya said he has another job lined up. In their joint YouTube video, he and Wilmot urged their supporters to push for policy change, but constructively and with respect.
“As a result of this whole controversy, as a result of putting my pronouns in my email signature,” Wilmot said, “it gave me an opportunity to educate people on this topic.”
