A pastor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was fired from his position at a public library after he refused to refer to a coworker by pronouns inconsistent with the employee’s biological sex.

Luke Ash, the lead pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church, worked at East Baton Rouge Parish Library for less than six months. During a July 7 conversation, a coworker told Ash to stop referring to an employee-in-training as “she.”

Ash spoke to news outlet The Washington Stand about his termination.

“A co-worker corrected me, said the person she was training preferred to be called ‘he’ and I refused …” he said. “I was fired for it.”

Ash was reprimanded by his supervisor for refusing to use the employee-in-training’s preferred pronouns and was told his actions violated the library’s code of conduct. On July 10, Ash received a notice of termination.

Ash told The Washington Stand that he believes referring to trans-identifying individuals according to their biological sex is a way to love them and share truth with them.

“I think that we’re very good at being lawyers to ourselves and deceiving ourselves into saying, ‘You know what? What I’m doing is actually the more loving thing … if I just concede on this thing, I’m actually being more loving,’” he said. “And I would just say ‘no.’ The loving thing is to tell the truth. Jesus said that He’s the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Him. And so, if we back off of the truth, then we back off the visibility of anything at all — but especially Jesus.”

According to Ash, referring to individuals by false pronouns violates his faith because it also causes him to lie.

 “I’m not going to lie. I cannot do it. I will not do it,” he said.

At this time, Ash has not filed suit against the library. However, Christians having been fired for living in accordance to their Biblical beliefs about gender have sought justice through lawsuits.

One such case is Peter Vlaming, who filed suit against West Point School Board in Virginia after he was terminated for using pronouns that matched a student’s biological sex. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 2024 after the initial incident in 2018. The West Point School Board paid $575,000 in a settlement with Vlaming.

Another case included Vivian Geraghty, a middle school teacher in Ohio who was forced to resign for choosing to use pronouns aligning with a student’s biological sex during the student’s “social” transition. Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, Geraghty was paid $450,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees by Jackson Local School District in December 2024.

Photo: Abobe Stock