Civil Rights and Discrimination

Decision Pending

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As I’ve said before, it would be interesting if the court were to rule that gay and transgender people are protected from workplace discrimination, and then rule that religious business owners can’t be compelled to create messages and participate in ceremonies that violate their faith. That, however, probably won’t happen.

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To the High Court

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An interesting take. We’ll see what happens when the case is argued.

Meanwhile, while LGBTQ activists argue for their rights, other LGBTQ activists seek to take away the rights of others, which again may be headed to the Supreme Court. It would be interesting if the court were to rule separately that gay and transgender people are protected from workplace discrimination, and religious business owners can’t be compelled to create messages and participate in ceremonies that violate their faith.

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No Longer About Legal Equality

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He observes, quite accurately, that:

A culture that once preached individuality and personal freedom has become conformist and hectoring, its self-appointed queer commissars constantly policing the language and bringing pressure to bear on those who run afoul of their ever-evolving standards.

And, tellingly:

When I asked the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s leading gay-rights group, for statistics on the number of LGBTQ people annually denied employment, housing, or service at a hotel or restaurant due to their sexuality or gender identity, the group was unable to provide me with any. Most social movements are able to identify the extent of the problems they seek to address.

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Does the Trump Admin Really Want to Deny Transpeople Healthcare?

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The Affordable Care Act prohibits healthcare providers—doctors and hospitals—from discriminating on the basis of sex. An Obama-era policy interpreted “sex” to include gender identity. Now, the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has proposed rolling back that interpretation.

LGBTQ advocates say that doing so will open the door to discrimination against transgender men and women by healthcare providers. So why would the Trump administration do this, unless they just hate LBGTQ people? That, in effect, is the narrative in most mainstream liberal media.

The two sides see each other’s views through their own lenses, of course. “It’s clear his administration wants to return to a time when discrimination against women and anyone who faces gender discrimination in healthcare went unchecked,” said the National Women’s Law Center. Likewise, Pride at Work issued an alert that read:

“Like every bully, this president attacks those he perceives as weak and least able to defend themselves. What this bully misunderstands is that transpeople aren’t facing this administration alone. Pride at Work and countless other organizations and institutions are here to stand with, for, and beside our transgender siblings in the face of these unrelenting attacks from this administration.”

But as advocates for religiously affiliated, generally Catholic hospitals have pointed out, they have come under pressure to proscribe puberty blockers to pre-adolescent children, and to perform gender realignment procedures that conflict with their religious beliefs, just as being required to perform abortions not necessitated by the mother’s health would.

These fears are not just theoretical. In New Jersey and in California, Catholic hospitals have been sued by transwomen for refusing to perform hysterectomies as the initial step in gender realignment.

Another argument against the Obama-era policy is that bureaucrats shouldn’t reinterpret statute so broadly as to go well beyond Congress’s intent. “When Congress prohibited discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term, and we are making our regulations conform,” said the HHS Office of Civil Rights.

Because this issue involves healthcare, which can be a matter of life and death, partisans are in full throttle. But not all healthcare is emergency treatment, and so far LGBTQ advocates, despite their heated rhetoric, haven’t shown that transpeople face discrimination by doctors and hospitals that puts them at risk, as opposed to the inconvenience of going for reassignment treatment at facilities that are not religiously affiliated.

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A Better Way

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LGBTQ activists who say we need the Equality Act to end discrimination refuse to agree to a bill that would protect the conscience rights of religious traditionalists not to be forced to engage in messaging and creative activities that violate their faith. It’s not a big compromise; it’s a win-win. But somehow the activists and their progressive representatives don’t seem to be actually interested in winning (other than winning re-election for themselves and their party by keeping the issue unresolved, election after election).

Worth repeating:

More.

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The Equality Act Builds ‘LGBTQ Rights’ on the Oppression of Others

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