BATON ROUGE — A man claimed he was unfairly fired from his job after he refused to use the pronouns that another employee said they used. 

Luke Ash, a former library employee and pastor, said he knows that what he did was against the library's code of conduct for employees, but he says calling his co-workers by the pronouns they identify with would be against his own beliefs.

Ash worked at the library for fewer than six months. He was fired Thursday after having a conversation with a co-worker about another co-worker. In the conversation he refused to refer to the second co-worker by their proper pronouns. 

The next day his manager gave him a copy of the inclusivity policy and told him they would figure out how to move forward.

"I refused to use preferred pronouns through the course of conversation," Ash said. "They got back with me on Thursday morning by giving me the dismissal."

The policy says the library provides an atmosphere in which all employees are welcomed, accepted and respected. It also says all employees have the right to be addressed by their proper pronouns. 

"I believe that there are religious convictions and there are other kinds of convictions, and when those things are in contradiction with each other, there has to be given preference for one or the other," Ash said.

Logan Wolf, a board member at Forum for Equality, said it's important to respect someone's pronouns and use them.

"You just have to treat someone with basic decency, and I think that's at the crux here," Wolf said. "This person willingly violated policies and procedures of the EBR library towards another employee, and I think that's not okay. He's doing this because he wants to be aggrieved, instead of actually being aggrieved, and it's just not right."