The heated debate over transgender policy in schools has gone international. In Canada, a Catholic high school recently suspended a student for opposing the school’s transgender policy.
The student, 16-year-old Josh Alexander, says it’s a case of religious freedom under attack.
The Canadian teen took a stand to defend girls, protesting his Catholic school’s transgender bathroom policy, and now his story is going viral.
Josh told CBN News, “Our freedom of religion is under attack; God’s natural order is under attack. The family unit in general is being attacked from every angle. And they’re starting with the youth.”
Josh says his ordeal began last October at St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario. Since he believes God created only two sexes, Josh refused to use the preferred pronouns of two transgender students.
“Female students in the school informed me that male students were using the female washrooms and they were concerned by this. So, I started to talk about that. I voiced my beliefs, and I expressed concern to the principal. A female student also expressed concern to the principal, and we were both ignored,” Josh said.
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The principal’s response prompted Josh to organize a student demonstration outside the school. Just two days before the protest, however, he received an indefinite suspension from classes.
When Josh returned for the next semester, school officials arrested him, saying he was trespassing.
He says he wasn’t hateful in any way during his protest, but he was still treated like a criminal.
“I wasn’t, I wasn’t disrespectful at all. I voiced my beliefs, my sincere beliefs. And I never directed at a specific trans student that was doing anything. I don’t condone their behavior, but I also sympathize with them because they’re a victim of our society and our education system and all the terrible parents that have encouraged and pushed that on their children.”
Josh says he’s actually the one who was disrespected, all because of his Christian beliefs.
“I was called a racist, sexist, a bigot by the staff, and students were involved in this stuff. And I just continued to voice my beliefs and it ended up getting me arrested. There were conditions they wanted me to agree to in order to return to school. As a Christian, I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to accept the false and I’m not going to go along with the mainstream narrative that is completely contrary to God’s natural order.”
Canada’s Liberty Defense Fund sued the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board on behalf of Josh.
“Hopefully we can find a resolution and move on and that the safety of our female students would be taken a little more seriously and our freedom of expression would be defended rather than attacked by our education system,” he said.
And Josh was arrested a second time – not for trespassing at the school, but for protesting a community library drag queen storybook hour.
“My faith plays a fairly large role in it. I’m not going to silence myself. We’re told to go into the world and preach the gospel, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do, and we’ll see where that goes,” he told CBN News.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN