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Was a public school counselor in Oregon participating in hate speech when he displayed two kids’ books about the gender binary? That’s what a federal appeals court ruled last month.
The court determined Roderick E. Theis II violated hate speech legislation by showcasing the books “He is He” and “She is She.” It also ruled that displaying these books, which affirm the gender binary, was not protected under the First Amendment.
In the wake of the unreasonable ruling, the books’ coauthor, Ryan Bomberger, spoke to The Daily Wire about the case and the work conservative Christians must do to save the country. He didn’t hold back.
The gender binary isn’t evil
Bomberger said “He is He” and “She is She,” which he cowrote with his wife Bethany, are rooted in love.
“We wanted to take this insane pronoun issue and just make something that spoke truth about the human condition and celebrate what it means to be a boy, and celebrate what it means to be a girl,” he said. “It celebrates motherhood, fatherhood, the means by which all of us exist. So, what’s more inclusive than a book that speaks to the … heterosexual self-identity of more than 90% of Americans? How is that not inclusive?”
Bomberger rejects the idea that the books could be seen as harmful in any way.
“The books are so beautifully illustrated. They are diverse. As someone myself, I’m mixed white, black, part Asian, part Native American. I’m a mixture of all things,” he said. “It’s laughable that the school sees these books as being hostile in any way, shape, or form.”
The school district isn’t just being unreasonable here. It’s hypocritical. Bomberger pointed out that many of the teachers showcased BLM or LGBT propaganda, which he called “highly discriminatory against the nuclear family, against fatherhood, against black conservatives” and “anti-science,” respectively.
“What’s laughable to me is this is the same school district that pushes things like ‘How To Be An Anti-Racist,’ which has an animus toward white people, [and says] in fact, the only way to deal with past discrimination is present discrimination,” Bomberger said. “So that book violates Oregon’s law.”
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Battling in court
The fact that a scuffle over his commonsense books made it to court, he says, was by design. Reports said Theis, who worked for the InterMountain Education Service District for over 15 years, was fired after a teacher recorded him showing the books to some eighth graders. Bomberger says that the whole situation was a setup.
“There was one complaint from a teacher who only saw the covers. This teacher never even read the books — only saw the covers and objected to the covers,” Bomberger explained. “That teacher is the one that set up the two 8th graders who came and insisted on reading the books. It was not genuine interest. It was set up. That was the teacher that actually recorded the whole interaction, where Rod allowed them because they kept pressing him to read the books.”
Bomberger expressed sorrow about the recent ruling, arguing that it will set a bad precedent in the West Coast.
“My hope is that Alliance Defending Freedom does appeal it,” he said. “They have a very strong case.”
Though Theis’ appeal was rejected by the court, ADF lawyers have promised to “continue to defend Rod’s First Amendment freedom to express his views like other employees.”
Bomberger said the lower court misunderstood the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not stop a football coach from kneeling midfield to say a quiet prayer.
“They said that [Kennedy’s prayer] was a private, personal thing. It wasn’t private. It was very public,” Bomberger said. “It was during his duty and his role. So simply based upon that, I think they have a case and the fact that the First Amendment doesn’t get stripped from government employees when they walk onto taxpayer-funded property.”
When woke fights back
Bomberger also argued that the recent case shows that wokism is not dead, but simply has been rebranded, hiding in the shadows while it grows stronger.
“We need to be forever vigilant about where this stuff goes,” Bomberger said. “The public school system is so deeply rooted in ideologies that are anti-American, that are anti-science, and certainly in many cases that are anti-truth. So, we have to be aware that this is not something that’s going away anytime soon.”
The Left’s goal is to fake outrage, foster ignorance, and silence dissension, Bomberger said.
“Well, honestly, we hear the phrase all the time: ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ and apparently, it’s a goal. It’s a virtue of the woke Left,” Bomberger said. “They want to pretend that they are in some sort of fascist society where they can’t get [their favorite] books.”
While Democrats hand-wring about book bans, they don’t seem to care when librarians make explicit material available to kids.
“They’re feigning outrage about fake book banning, but [they’re fine] when it comes to completely inappropriate content for children that is sexually explicit, that is violent and violent and gory, I mean the list goes on and on,” he said. “But it’s perfectly fine if it could be categorized as a diversity book — diversity being LGBTQ/DEI.”
Bomberger ended by calling on his fellow Christians to stand up and not be afraid to speak the truth.
“The most important thing, as a Christian, I see this first and foremost as a spiritual battle, not just this book battle, but the battle for objective truth,” Bomberger said. “First of all, don’t despair. There is always hope, but we have to be vigilant. We cannot leave the major influence of our children up to … the education establishment. We can’t leave it up to Hollywood, and we often do.”
“We’re called to love every human being, not every human doing,” he added. “So as Christians, we have to see the world differently, and we have to react differently.”
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