A Christian pastor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been fired from his post at a local public library when he resisted orders to lie about a coworker’s gender.

The issue was that Luke Ash, pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church, was dismissed when he declined to address a woman as “he.”

The Washington Stand reported, “The firing occurred despite a growing legal precedent supporting the free speech rights of those who say they cannot be forced to utter language that they believe is wrong.”

The report explained Ash had a conversation with a coworker at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library about another worker, who was in training, and was told the woman wanted to be called “he.”

“Ash continued to use biologically accurate pronouns in reference to her. When Ash’s coworker attempted to ‘correct’ him into using the individual’s preferred pronouns, the pastor declined to use them,” the report said.

He first was reprimanded by his supervisor for not lying, then fired.

Such forced language fights have erupted over and over in recent years as the LGBT ideology, specifically transgenderism, ardently was promoted by the administration of Joe Biden. The ideology itself is based on a falsehood, as being male or female is embedded in the human body to the DNA level and doesn’t change.

However, such speech restrictions and demands have been found to violate free speech protections of the Constitution.

The Washington Stand noted that another case involved Peter Vlaming, a high school teacher in West Point, Virginia who was fired in 2018 for refusing to refer to a student with trans pronouns.

He sued the public school district and won, eventually settling for $575,000 from the district.

Ash has explained there were “several things” in the library that made it clear it was not welcoming of Christians or conservatives.

On “Washington Watch” with Tony Perkins, he said, “There’s a difference between telling me what I can’t say and then telling me what I have to say, and so that was the line for me at that point.”

He said, “I’m not going to lie. I cannot do it. I will not do it.”

He noted, of the library atmosphere, “They think it’s a sin to ‘ban’ books, and if you talk about banning books, putting a book on a list, then that’s well within their wheelhouse to call you a Nazi or whatever. But they’re absolutely limiting access to books by which books they decide to purchase for the library or even on the promotion of [the] books displayed. So there’s a continuum of access. It’s not just about banning a book on a piece of paper. If you can pretend that that book doesn’t exist, that’s even more effective.”

Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is currently a news editor for the WND News Center, and also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.