Fox’s Shannon Bream and ADF attorney buck journalistic standards and misgender trans student
Bream and extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom serially misgender trans people, which is stigmatizing and considered harassment
Written by Alex Paterson
Published
Fox News anchor Shannon Bream, part of the network’s so-called “news”-side team, and guest Tyson Langhofer, an attorney from the extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), misgendered a trans student while promoting one of ADF’s anti-trans court cases. The segment was about a judge recommending to dismiss an ADF case in which the group was defending a professor who refused to use a trans student’s correct name and pronouns.
Since June 2018, Bream has interviewed ADF attorneys and clients in six different segments. In each segment, Bream gave ADF’s lawyers a platform to spew anti-LGBTQ misinformation and promote the group’s different cases against nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community. ADF has a cozy relationship with Fox, and ADF officials seldom appear on other cable news networks; in fact, no one from ADF has appeared on CNN or MSNBC weekday programming in at least the past two years. Notably, ADF attorneys have appeared on Fox News seven times in 2019.
During the September 5 interview, Bream discussed ADF’s case Meriwether v. The Trustees of Shawnee State University with Langhofer and the case’s plaintiff Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at the university. ADF filed the case against Shawnee State University after the university took action against Meriwether for repeatedly misgendering a transgender student during class. Misgendering is the practice of referring to someone “as a gender other than one that a person identifies with” and is a form of harassment that unduly stigmatizes trans folks. It also goes against journalistic standards.
At the beginning of the segment, Bream, who has made a practice of misgendering trans people, referred to the trans student as “biologically born male but transitioning to female.” Langhofer also misgendered the trans student, who is a woman, while defending Meriwether’s anti-trans actions. Langhofer stated that Meriwether was “willing to refer to this student with his last name or his first name.”
Meriwether said that he wanted “to be extended the same respect and dignity” that he claims to extend to his students, even though he demeaned his student by repeatedly misgendering her. As ThinkProgress’ Zack Ford has noted, a Shawnee State University investigation stated that Meriwether communicated that he “does not recognize transgenderism — he specifically stated that he believes transgender is a lie and mental illness” and “discussed the ‘wrongness’ of transgender people.”
Citation From the September 5 edition of Fox News’ Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream:
SHANNON BREAM (HOST): A professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio is suing the school, claiming a violation of First Amendment rights. After being punished for refusing to use a student's preferred gender pronouns. Tonight, a federal magistrate judge is recommending that the suit be dismissed, but the professor is far from giving up. So let’s talk to him. Professor Nicholas Meriweather and his attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom, Tyson Langhofer. Welcome to you both.
TYSON LANGHOFER (ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM): Thanks for having us.
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER (PROFESSOR, SHAWNEE STATE UNIVERSITY): Thank you. Good to be here.
BREAM: OK. So just to give people a little bit of a background, there was a student who was in your class, biologically born male but transitioning to female, asked that you use female pronouns. And professor, I know there were different compromises that you and the school talked about, just using the first name or the last name. Eventually, you could not come to an agreement, and you said, “Using these pronouns is a violation of my religious beliefs.” How so?
MERIWETHER: Well, it's important to remember that the university is to be a marketplace of ideas and not merely an assembly line for one type of thought. And in this particular case, I was being required to endorse an ideology that I do not hold. I don't think that public universities should be in the business of requiring people to endorse or express ideologies that they don't hold.
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LANGHOFER: What happened was professor Meriwether indicated that he would be willing to refer to this student with his last name or his first name and just avoid the use of pronouns. But what the university was requiring was that professor Meriwether change the way he addressed the entire class and that he could not use any pronouns for any other students at all. And he had to not only change the way that he addressed this student, but he changed the way he addressed all students. And that's exactly what the First Amendment forbids. They cannot -- a university cannot force a professor to speak messages that he disagrees with.
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MERIWETHER: I would like to be extended the same respect and dignity that I extend to my students. I don't expect my students or require them to express something that they don't believe or endorse an ideology that they don't hold. And I'm being required to do that.