A Catholic highschool student in Canada was reportedly arrested Monday after being suspended for protesting against transgender people’s use of bathrooms and saying there are only two genders – and now he’s appealing to Ontario’s human rights tribunal.
Josh Alexander, 16, said the leadership of St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario, told him his continued attendance can be “detrimental to the physical and mental well-being” of transgender students, based on The Epoch Times.
The highschool junior tweeted that the Ontario Police arrested and charged him after he attempted to attend class in violation of an exclusion order following his suspension earlier this school 12 months.
“Offense is clearly defined by the offended,” Alexander told The Epoch Times. “I expressed my religious beliefs at school and it spiraled uncontrolled. Not everybody’s going to love that. That doesn’t make me a bully. It doesn’t mean I’m harassing anybody. They express their beliefs and I express mine. Mine obviously don’t fit the narrative.”
Alexander, who described himself as a “born-again Christian” and led student motion in support of last 12 months’s trucker convoy, reportedly has not been to high school since he was first suspended in November. He was hit with a suspension for allegedly organizing protests at his school against biological males in girls’ bathrooms and arguing at school that God created two unchangeable genders.
“Multiple students, including trans students, were sort of shouting me down,” the coed told The Epoch Times of the classroom exchange.
Alexander was told by his principal that he was allowed to return to high school provided that he stopped using the “dead name,” or given name, of transgender students and excluded himself from classes with two transgender students who objected to his religious views about gender.
Despite the fact that it was lifted in January, Alexander’s suspension has effectively continued after the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board “excluded” him for the remainder of the varsity 12 months, based on his legal counsel at Liberty Coalition Canada. Alexander stays unsure whether the technically non-disciplinary motion will proceed into next 12 months.
Alexander’s lawyer James Kitchen said the varsity has accused his client of “bullying” transgender students.
“Obviously, he doesn’t actually bully them as that term can be defined by… reasonable people,” Kitchen told The Epoch Times. “He’s not going to hunt them out and call them names and make fun of them. But he does express his views about what these people say and about what they consider and about what they’re doing. And he expresses them online, and he expresses them in the category.”
Later this month, Alexander plans to appeal his original suspension to the provincial human rights tribunal, which might bring his case before a faculty board panel. The appeal has reportedly hit a technical snag regarding whether Alexander is independent of his parents.
The principal of St. Joseph’s Catholic High School told Fox News Digital he was prohibited under Canadian law from commenting on the continuing case.
