If I were the teacher, I would have just gone along with it and called the person "he"/"him". But that's me.

It's a very dangerous slope to where they're trying to force teachers to believe certain things and speak a certain way, with the threat of firing.

Question: What if the person wanted to be called "they" or "ze"? Should the teacher be required to do that?

Clearly the teacher was trying to cooperate. He wasn't intentionally being a dick about it, or he would have refused to use the male name at all, and would have kept calling the student by their former female name. He didn't. He used the male name consistently, and everyone agrees upon that. He also was trying to avoid using pronouns at all. Everyone agrees with that. So it's not like he was purposely calling the student "she" to rub it in her face. It looks like he just slipped up occasionally, and now he's fired. Awful.

Do I think the "it violated my religious belief" excuse is BS? Partially. I don't think he'd be "lying" to call the student "him", but at the same time, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that a religious Christian believes a person is the gender they are born with. In fact, if you went to a church and asked this (even confidentially), you'd get about 100% of respondents saying that they believe this.

My real problem here is that the speech/thought police are starting to force people to think and speak exactly like them, with threat of ruining their careers. What's next? Criminal penalties for misgendering? I know that some on the left have discussed wanting that.

Seriously, where does it end?