(LifeSiteNews) – A Christian ex-employee of power generator company Generac filed a religious discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that the company forced him out for refusing to use a “transgender” colleague’s preferred name and pronouns.
The Christian Post reported that Spencer Wimmer alleges he received a disciplinary action note warning him he could be terminated for not using the preferred terms despite his positive performance record and the lack of any such requirement in Generac’s policies. A human resources representative reportedly told him his religious objections “did not make any sense,” and that transgender names and pronouns should be considered as innocuous as nicknames.
Wimmer says he resigned on March 31, but attempted to rescind his resignation on April 2 upon learning he had other workplace protections for his religious freedom he could have invoked but was denied the ability to come back. He also says personal effects of his were returned “defaced and badly damaged,” including a Bible.
“I was asked to choose between my livelihood and my love for God and my beliefs,” Wimmer said.
The lawsuit contends that “Generac’s bias and hostility toward Mr. Wimmer’s religious beliefs — including the company’s discipline, harassment, denial of a reasonable accommodation, and ultimate termination of Mr. Wimmer — constitute religious discrimination under Title VII” of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It is an article of progressive faith that gender is no more than a matter of self-perception that individuals are free to change at will. But according to modern biology, sex is not a subjective sense of self but an objective scientific reality, established by an individual’s chromosomes from their earliest moments of existence and reflected by hundreds of genetically based characteristics.
Yet for years LGBT activists have worked to promote “gender fluidity,” the idea that sexual identity is separate from biology and discernible only by personal perception, across public education, libraries, health care, and cultural traditions such as beauty contests, school homecomings, and athletic competitions.
Critics say their efforts have yielded a wide array of harms, both to the physical and mental health of gender-confused individuals themselves as well as to the rights, health, and safety of those who disagree, such as girls and women forced to share intimate facilities with males, female athletes forced to compete against biological males with natural physical advantages, and individuals forced to affirm false sexual identities in violation of their consciences, their understanding of scientific fact, and/or their religious beliefs.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has taken multiple executive actions to reverse the Biden administration’s transgender policies, including an order that ends all federal support for “transition” procedures on minors, rescinds or amends all of the Biden health bureaucracy’s past endorsements of underage “transitioning,” and calls for a review of the medical literature on the subject, enforcing all existing restrictions on underage “transitioning,” and taking regulatory action to “end” the practice to the greatest extent possible under current law.
Another order prohibits males who claim to be female from competing against actual women in sex-specific athletic programs at schools receiving government funding. A third disqualifies gender-confused individuals from military service and prohibits military health services from conducting “transition” treatments and procedures.