What do you make of the "pronoun wars"?

A subset of broader American culture wars.

There was a widely-publicized news story about a conservative physical education teacher in a liberal Virginia school district who was fired after stating at a public meeting that he would not use students’ preferred pronouns. (He was then reinstated when his firing received negative backlash and was condemned as illegal and unconstitutional). Of course the teacher has now received an outpouring of support for standing up for his Christian values.

How will this fight end? Should teachers be fired for not using preferred pronouns? What is the situation in your school district?

In my opinion, as with all “culture war” issues, this is being exaggerated and trumped up into something bigger than it needs to be by both sides (yep, there’s that phrase some of you will hate). The only reason the teacher spoke out against it was because the school board was discussing a policy to enforce the usage of correct pronouns (thereby creating resistance). It would be nice if this were handled on a case-by-case basis. A teacher might be less likely to resist it if they aren’t being threatened with firing for questioning the policy. But the left wants to codify the orthodoxy at the policy level and the right wants to take up a religious crusade against it. And it’s the few students this applies to who are left feeling more marginalized.