Faith and Freedom - This Pastor Would Not Lie

0:00Welcome to Faith and Freedom. We hope to inform, inspire, and encourage you to stand up for Faith and Freedom as we discuss victories and challenges in the courts, in public policy and in the culture. Faith and Freedom is brought to you by Liberty Council, a litigation, education, and policy organization. Join us now as we address the latest cultural issues across America and around the world. This pastor was fired for refusing to lie. We're going to be talking about this case on Faith and Freedom. A Met Staver founder in Chairman of Liberty Council joining me is Holly Mead. This case has been going on a while and I think it's good to revisit it just so everyone knows we haven't left pastor Luke Ash behind. We have sued the city of Boughton Rouge and he was working part-time at a library. A lot of pastors have to take a second job when they have a small church and that was his case.

1:03But yet the whole subject of trying to make him lie about pronouns didn't go over well with him. No, so Liberty Council's filed suit against the city of Boughton Rouge in Louisiana. On behalf of Bivocational Pastor Luke Ash, he was unlawfully fired from the East Boughton Rouge Parish Library. He was part-time, he was also pastor and so he's working at the library and another coworker comes up to him and introduces to him a woman. And then this coworker says she goes by a certain pronoun, they are some other pronoun other than a female pronoun. And he says I don't do that. I mean, what would you do if someone came up and said my pronoun is they and so you have to refer to that pronoun as they or they're a woman and my pronoun is he, him. Would you refer to that person with the false pronoun? No, I just call them by their name. Yeah, and you don't have to. That's exactly right. It would be very easy to accommodate the person. You say, okay.

2:04Well, you know, when you're around them in their presence, then you don't have to use pronouns, just refer to them by their first or the last name. No big deal. So you and I talk Holly, Matt, you know, we go back and forth. We don't have to refer to each other by pronouns. Why would you need to refer to somebody by pronoun? It's easy to accommodate. Why would you force someone to lie? But this is East Baton Rouge Parish Library and it's indicative of a lot of the public libraries in the country. Well, but the situation would probably come up if there was a third party in the room, then you're referring to that person. That's probably how this all came up. But he still doesn't have to use an improper pronoun. You could say, yeah, I was talking instead of saying to her or him or they, I was talking to Holly, I was talking to Jonathan, just use their name. Very simple. Easy accommodation. But no, not for East Baton Rouge Parish Library, they had the library so-called inclusivity policy. And they said, well, now you violated this policy. Well, they didn't like informed people of this inclusivity policy.

3:15So this inclusivity policy, so-called, says that you have to refer to people by their preferred pronoun. You know, and I doubt this was part of the hiring process when they unbarded him. Oh, by the way, you have to use incorrect pronouns. Yeah, during your on-board Easter. Yeah. So what's the pronoun that you use? Pastor Luke Ash, or Luke Ash? Well, that would be like, well, what do you think? I mean- I'm a male. I'm a male. What do you think? I don't know how I would use. That's a stupid question. Yeah. But no, so this was never brought up. But now they've whipped out this so-called inclusivity policy. It's inclusive for everyone except for Christians. You know, it's really sad, Matt, that the public libraries, the whole American Library Association has gone this route. You know, a library just to be a nice place where you take your children, you'd read books. Now they've made it a whole agenda underlying the library system. Yeah, I know. And so the American Library Association puts out a lot of material about what's going on. And there's a lot of these public libraries that just really use their taxpayer status for promoting this LGBTQ agenda.

4:25So this is an example of this inclusivity policy. But they also do other things like purchasing books and refusing to purchase other books. And then making certain subject matters prominent and easy to find, but making other subject matters less prominent and difficult to find. So they're not the public library of yesterday or their propaganda machines in many cases. The good news is that in this particular case, we filed suit against the city of Baton Rouge regarding the East Baton Rouge Parish Library on behalf of Luke Ash. That word will get around to all the other public libraries in the country. And he's just one example. I'm sure they've had, you know, other libraries have had this situation as well. Yeah, this is just the tip of the iceberg. So the good thing about the fact that the American Library Association and these libraries that are part of that is that they'll know about this lawsuit. Because we have litigated before against libraries that have policies for using their common rooms, their community rooms, but they restricted religion, no religion in it.

5:33And in fact, we had one of our first cases a number of years ago in Wisconsin, where they actually had a room called the Constitution Room. And inside of it, they actually had the Constitution, but you couldn't actually have the protection of the Constitution when you entered the room because you couldn't talk about religion in that room. We filed suit, we won, we won a number of other cases regarding libraries. And what happened is the American Library Association then published in their newsletter that all these public libraries get. You better double check your policies because Liberty Council is filing suit against them. So they're going to know about this case. Oh, yeah. So we have filed suit on behalf of Luke Ash. We sent a demand letter to the city of Baton Rouge regarding its library. And they did not respond. So we filed a lawsuit. We're arguing that this violates the first amendment religious free exercise clause because it's public. We also argued for a state law that protects religious freedom, that it's a violation of that law as well. And it also is a violation of Title VII, which is the federal law that requires the library provide accommodation.

6:40And you know, unfortunately, a lot of these court cases take a long time, but we are fighting for Luke Ash. And I believe we can prevail. And again, as you said earlier, other libraries will see the results and more freedom will be given. And Luke, if he chooses to come back to his position, restores benefits, his back pay damages and attorneys fees and costs. Yeah. So it's going to be an expensive proposition for this library for making a stupid mistake in terminating Luke Ash because they had the clear opportunity and ability to be able to accommodate him as we already talked about. No big deal. You don't have to force your LGBTQ ideology on pastor Luke Ash. Just don't use pronouns with this particular person if you don't want to use their preferred pronoun. And I didn't mention they need to also revise the pronoun policy. Yeah. So we have raised, as we mentioned already, legal arguments, violation of the first amendment, free exercise clause, first amendment, free speech clause, equal protection clause, Louisiana law and federal Title VII.

7:46And in the lawsuit, we're asking, as you mentioned, to do away with the policy, revise that policy, abandon that so-called inclusivity policy. It's unconstitutional. And reinstate pastor Luke Ash to his prior position, restore his benefits, award back pay damages and attorneys fees and cost. And obviously, at the top of this is revised this pronoun policy. Frankly, they need to just eliminate it. Just, you don't need a pronoun policy. You're a library, right? You're teaching people to read. You're teaching people. Grammar. Grammar. And if you go to your books, unless it's these new found LGBTQ books, you know, you're going to have pronouns that are consistent with historic use of pronouns. But you know, it is really sad. They're doing this policy. They've got these so-called drag queens coming in, doing story hour. I mean, all this if they're really pushing it on, especially children who are coming to the library, it's just, it's not acceptable.

8:50No, it's not. And so if you know of a situation regarding other libraries, it doesn't have to be a library. It could be a public employer or a private employer. But particularly libraries, if you know of any situation there where people are being forced to use false pronouns. And again, it can be libraries. It can be other public employers. It can be private employers. Even under private employers, you cannot be forced to lie, period. If you're a school teacher or you're in a school situation and they're telling you, you have to use the pronouns of the children's choice. No, you don't. Not if it's a lie. You don't have to lie regarding biological truth or biblical truth. It is, it's wrong in so many ways. It's a violation of your religious protections under federal law, under state law. It's a violation of common sense. It's an aberration of biology and scientific evidence. There are only two sexes, male and female.

9:54Don't fall into the trap of being forced to lie. Give Liberty Council a call. For more information on this case, you can go to lc.org-flash-luke. That's lc.org-flash-luke. You've been listening to Faith and Freedom brought to you by Liberty Council. We hope that we have motivated you to stand up for your faith, family and freedom. Visit Liberty Council's website at lc.org where you can obtain email alerts and other information to keep you informed and involved. You can also call us at 407-875-1776. Again, that phone number 407-875-1776. Become an active partner of Liberty Council and make a difference in your community and across the nation. Get informed and get involved today. The website again, lc.org-lc.org