Unappeased Forever

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Last year, LGBTQ activists complained that President Trump did not issue a pride month proclamation, although many high-ranking officials and executive departments did so, This year the president issued a statement, and LGBTQ activists complained about it. But of course.

More. Obama was a more self-evidendently pro-LGBTQ rights president, as progressive activists view LGBTQ rigthts. But activists give Trump no credit for anything – from his convention acceptance speech pledging “to our protect LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression” (following the shooting deaths at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub) to openly gay appointments, to his administration’s raising the issue of the safety and security of gay people around the globe. Instead, efforts to find a workable balance between the rights of religious traditionalists not to face state coercion to provide creative services to same-sex weddings get denounced as “bigotry” and “hate” by progressives who have nothing but contempt for the rights of those whom they detest.

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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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Anti-Narrative

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More. Progressive Yale professor Greta LaFleur disdains Buttigieg’s marriage as insufficiently rad.

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

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Way Beyond Discrimination

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The bill does not simply extend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. If only! As even the Blade reports, it greatly expands the act’s definition of public accommodations well beyond the original intent, and limits use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as a defense against state coercion to violate religious belief. Not to mention that it defines gender identity as based on presentation, not physical alteration and legally changed gender status.

“The Trump administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights,” an administration official told the Blade.

But already, news reports are saying that the Trump administration favors discrimination by not supporting this awful bill.


More. On Nov. 7, 2013, the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) which would have prohibited employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, without the overreaching leftwing grab-bag of The Equality Act, passed the Senate with bipartisan support by a vote of 64–32. All Senate Democrats joined 10 Senate Republicans to approve the bill. The GOP-controlled House never voted on the measure.

It’s also true that during the first two years of the Obama administration (2009-10), when Democrats had majorities in both the House and the Senate that enabled them to pass Obamacare, they chose not to move the bill, even when it seemed plausible the GOP would retake the House. Instead, as with immigration, they decided to run on the issue yet again.

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The New Culture Wars

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Transgenderism has transformed what used to be the fight for gay and lesbian legal equality. Now, it’s something very different.

Every time the old Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was poised to pass Congress, activists and Democratic sponsors changed it so it couldn’t win majority support. First it was a bill to outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, and once that had enough Republican support to pass, it was changed to include gender identity, which didn’t. The Equality Act is ENDA on steroids, vastly expanding the scope of “public accommodations” to include creative-services providers (such as bakers and wedding photographers), gutting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and requiring that bio males who chose to “present” as female (no physical alteration required) be treated as women in all areas, including the right to compete as women in sporting competitions.

The GOP-led Senate won’t pass the Equality Act, and rightly so. But Democrats and LGBT progressive will say it’s because Republicans don’t oppose employment discrimination, as if it were the original ENDA.

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