TL;DR
- Texas Tech’s chancellor ordered all faculty to teach only two sexes in line with new state and federal directives.
- The move follows a Texas law and Trump’s executive order recognizing only “immutable” birth sexes.
- Faculty must revise course materials or risk noncompliance.
- LGBTQ advocates say the policy erases trans people and undermines free speech.
- A similar clash at Texas A&M ended with a professor’s firing and the president’s resignation.
The Lone Star Crackdown
Texas Tech just drew a hard line in the sand—and it’s one that slices straight through the lives of LGBTQ students and faculty. Chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell dropped a memo Thursday that basically told his professors: forget the complexity of gender, in class you will teach “only two human sexes.”
This wasn’t Mitchell freelancing. He leaned on a fresh Texas law requiring government records to reflect only birth-assigned sex, President Trump’s January executive order declaring only two unchangeable sexes, and Gov. Greg Abbott’s demand that Texas agencies toe the same line. In his memo, Mitchell struck a firm but almost patronizing tone: “Regardless, in your role as a state employee, compliance with the law is required.” Translation: leave your personal beliefs at home.
The directive covers all five campuses under Texas Tech’s umbrella—Texas Tech in Lubbock, Angelo State, Midwestern State, and the system’s two health science centers. That’s more than 60,000 students being taught under a state-enforced gender binary, whether their professors believe in it or not.
Faculty Under Fire
The chancellor didn’t just wave his hand and hope for the best. He told professors to go line by line through syllabi, lectures, and lesson plans, purging anything that doesn’t match the new two-sex doctrine. For medical and nursing programs, where intersex conditions and gender-affirming care are real-world topics, the silence from the system’s leadership is deafening. When pressed about how those schools should handle intersex realities, the administration clammed up.
The Texas law itself acknowledges that intersex people exist but then doubles down by insisting they “are not considered to belong to a third sex.” Instead, they’re promised vague “accommodations” that remain undefined. It’s a bureaucratic dodge that leaves real people in limbo.
Echoes of Texas A&M
If this déjà vu feels fresh, that’s because Texas A&M just went through it. Earlier this month, a student filmed herself objecting to a lecture about gender identity, claiming it was “illegal” under Trump’s executive order. The fallout was swift and brutal: the professor, Melissa McCoul, was fired, senior faculty leaders were removed from their posts, and A&M’s president, Mark Welsh, resigned. McCoul is appealing her firing and weighing legal action.
Mitchell clearly doesn’t want his campuses making national headlines for defying the new rules, so he’s preemptively tightening the leash.
LGBTQ Advocates Clap Back
LGBTQ advocates aren’t buying it. Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, didn’t mince words: “We cannot stand idly by while the lives of our trans neighbors are erased from the history books.” He blasted the move as censorship, warning that restricting what professors can teach will cripple Texas’ academic standing. “Freedom cannot exist in a state where even our ideas are policed,” he said.
For queer students, the implications go far beyond textbooks. Being told by professors—and by extension, the state—that their identities aren’t valid is a direct assault on their existence. For trans and nonbinary students, the classroom becomes not a place of growth but a battlefield where their reality is denied daily.
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t just about one university system. It’s part of a calculated political agenda to erase LGBTQ lives from public view, starting with the classroom. By reducing sex to a binary and criminalizing dissent, Texas is weaponizing education to enforce ideology.
And make no mistake—this isn’t neutral. It’s a hostile act toward queer communities, intersex people, and anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into the categories politicians find convenient. The message to LGBTQ Texans is loud and clear: your truth is expendable.
But if history tells us anything, it’s that erasure breeds resistance. Students, faculty, and advocates won’t stop pushing back. And in the end, Texas may find that silencing diversity in the classroom only amplifies it in the streets.