Scott Yenor, a tenured professor of political science at Boise State University, wrote for The Daily Signal on Aug. 2 that transgender activists undermine parental rights by pushing laws that bar parents from challenging the sexual and gender preferences of their children.

(WNS)–An Idaho professor who wrote an article challenging transgender ideology is facing increasing calls for his termination. Scott Yenor, a tenured professor of political science at Boise State University, wrote for The Daily Signal on Aug. 2 that transgender activists undermine parental rights by pushing laws that bar parents from challenging the sexual and gender preferences of their children.

The article was posted to the Boise State Facebook page, and opponents—faculty, staff, students, and activists—called the article “hate speech” and “bigoted, homophobic, and misogynistic.” An online petition calling for Yenor’s firing said he promoted “an ideology of violence.”

Boise State Dean Corey Cook released a statement defending Yenor’s right to publish but also accusing him of using language inconsistent with the university’s core values of “collegiality, caring, tolerance, civility, and respect.” The school’s director of diversity and inclusion, Francisco Salinas, went one step farther, linking Yenor’s piece to the Charlottesville, Va., white supremacists rally in a post on the university website.

“Not every person who agrees with Yenor’s piece is likely to become an espoused neo-Nazi, but likely every neo-Nazi would agree with the substance of Yenor’s piece,” wrote Salinas.

Yenor told The Daily Signal the personal attacks don’t bother him, but what is troubling instead is the undermining of a basic tenant of academia: The idea that “debate has to start with an understanding of what the other person is arguing.”

“It strikes me that there has really been, first of all, no effort to first understand what I’m arguing and second of all, to get anywhere beyond name-calling and labeling,” Yenor said.

© World News Service. Used with permission.