Most people know who Jordan Peterson is today. Five years ago, he was relatively unknown to most people.

The reason he gained notoriety is because he was protesting the Canadian policy of compelled speech which would force someone to refer to another by their preferred gender pronouns.

Peterson’s issue wasn’t with calling them what they wanted to be called, the issue was the government compelling it and forcing that you do so under penalty of law.

This sort of thing actually happened in Kansas back in 2021 when she was suspended after refusing to call a student by their preferred name and pronoun.

Thankfully, justice has prevailed, and this teacher won a settlement from the school.

According to Epoch Times,

Pamela Ricard, who taught math at Fort Riley Middle School before she retired in May, was suspended for three days by the school in April 2021 and received a formal written reprimand that same month for “addressing a biologically female student by the student’s legal and enrolled last name,” according to a lawsuit that Ricard filed in March against school officials (pdf).

In an Aug. 31 statement, Alliance Defending Freedom announced that Fort Riley Middle School officials “have agreed to pay $95,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees for violating a math teacher’s First Amendment rights when they reprimanded and suspended her for addressing a student by the student’s legal and enrolled name and forced her to conceal the student’s social transition from the student’s parents.”

This is precisely why we as conservatives are against some of these policies. They fly in the face of our freedom of speech. To force someone to refer to another person as something else under penalty of law or some sort of suspension as was the case in this instance, is contradictory to the First Amendment of our Constitution.