A deputy with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon was fired from his job in April after more than 27 years of distinguished service. Mason Goodknight was not fired for any breach of ethics or code of conduct violation. He was fired because he refused to strip search any criminal suspects who identified as transgender due to his Christian beliefs. A new policy, however, dictated that women who identified as men would be strip-searched by male officers. Law enforcement had accepted the tenets of gender ideology, and law enforcement officers were expected to conduct themselves accordingly.
Goodknight’s story highlights, once again, the consequences of re-aligning our entire legal system to conform to the claims of gender ideology. After all, if we accept that a woman claiming to be a man is a man, then Goodknight or any other Christian who refuses to treat her like a man is behaving unreasonably. However, if we refuse to accept the truth of this claim but are compelled to act as if we do, then we are confronted with a crisis of conscience. LGBT activists insist that people can believe whatever they want — as long as they act in accordance with LGBT beliefs. This, of course, results in Christians being forced to choose between their livelihoods or their faith (and in the case of gender ideology, biological reality itself).
I reached out to Mason Goodknight to ask him a few questions about his ordeal.
Why were you recently fired?
I was ultimately and finally fired after a 10-week ordeal for “Insubordination” for refusing to sign off on the new Douglas County Jail Transgender Search and Housing Procedure, JP620. In short, I refused to call good evil and evil good by affirming the transgender delusional ideology. I refused to lie or act in ways contrary to biblical morality and common sense. I refused to treat biological males as females and vice versa.
