The College Fix

It violates free speech and it’s not based on sound science

The University of Minnesota has proposed to force its students and university employees to consent to transgender ideology, by mandating that everyone on campus “use the names, gender identities, and pronouns specified to them by other university members.” At its basest level this policy would represent a capitulation to an unscientific fad, and it may in fact violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, as various experts told The College Fix this week.

Transgender ideology is, in the main, wholly incoherent—at campuses across the country, activists can’t even agree on the basic definitions of the term. On its face the ideology is an unbelievable one: It goes against both well-established medical science and basic common sense to say that a man can “be” a woman if he simply “identifies” as one, or vice versa. Transgenderism is not based on evidence so much as a kind of bizarre philosophy. In all likelihood it is a mere passing trend that will probably fade away before too long.

The world is certainly big enough to accommodate all sorts of ideas, of course; recognizing that transgenderism is incorrect need not mean we have to ban it or outlaw it. That being said, people have plenty of good reasons for dissenting from this ideology. Refusing to acknowledge someone’s “gender identity” is not an unreasonable decision when the “gender identity” in question reflects a material falsehood. Part of the mission of universities is, or at least should be, the pursuit of truth, which is generally understood to be the opposite of falsity, e.g. someone believing he or she is a member of the opposite sex. School policy should at least make an effort to reflect this.

There is, of course, an argument to be made for students, faculty and staff to treat each other with a sort of sympathetic grace; using someone’s preferred pronouns could count as an act of social decorum without crossing the line into full-blown acceptance of transgenderism. Yet a policy that requires individuals to acquiesce to LGBT ideology is unseemly at best, and may violate the Constitution to boot. The university should scrap it.

MORE: New York City promises to FINE people for not using ‘ze’ or ‘hir’

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