Tag Archives: Court

News

Federal judge approves sex change for convicted murderer

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Wes from Reason to Stand send me this disturbing story from ABC News.

Excerpt: (links removed)

A federal judge ordered Massachusetts prison officials today to providesexual reassignment surgery for a convicted murderer, calling it the only way to correct the “prolonged violation” of the inmate’s Constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Michelle Kosilek, who was born Robert, had filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, seeking an injunction that would require prison officials to grant her the sexual reassignment surgery that was recommended by prison doctors as treatment for her gender identity disorder. Robert Kosilek was convicted in the 1990 strangulation death of his wife, Cheryl.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Michelle Kosilek, who lives as a woman in a male prison facility, had experienced “intense mental anguish,” and said there was a “serious medical need” for her to have the procedure.

“It has long been well-established that it is cruel for prison officials to permit an inmate to suffer unnecessarily from a serious medical need,” the judge wrote in his 128-page decision.

He called it “unusual” to treat a prisoner with gender identity disorder differently “than the numerous inmates suffering from more familiar forms of mental illness.”

[…]Kosilek first sued the Department of Corrections in 2000. Two years later, Wolf ruled she should receive treatment for gender identity disorder, which included hormones. Kosilek sued again in 2005, again asking for gender reassignment surgery.

Frances Cohen, an attorney for Kosilek, told the Associated Press the judge made a courageous and thoughtful ruling.

I wonder if Frances Cohen and the judge are going to be paying for the surgery? No – that’s for the taxpayers to handle, I guess.

This tomfoolery is actually not unprecedented. Sex changes are taxpayer-funded in Ontario, Canada – where they have single-payer health care. And criminals are all eligible for sex changes in the UK under their NHS socialized medicine system. Here’s a recent case from last year, where a convicted killer is getting a sex change, courtesy of the NHS. (Which means the UK taxpayer)

News

Mark Regnerus’s research vindicated by University of Texas at Austin

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From Focus on the Family.

Excerpt:

The University of Texas at Austin announced Wednesday that a sociologist who has been excoriated by some in the media over a study showing that parents’ homosexual relationships can have negative effects on children is innocent of academic misconduct

Dr. Mark Regnerus made headlines in June, when his study was published in the widely respected journal Social Science Research. According to his findings, children raised by homosexual parents are more likely than those raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from poor impulse control, depression and suicidal thoughts, require mental health therapy; identify themselves as homosexual; choose cohabitation; be unfaithful to partners; contract sexually transmitted diseases; be sexually molested; have lower income levels; drink to get drunk; and smoke tobacco and marijuana.

As a result, a gay-activist blogger accused Regnerus of academic fraud, demanding in July that the university release all his research material and emails with fellow sociologists.

Administrators conducted an exhaustive pre-investigation to determine whether a more comprehensive one would be necessary — including hiring a consultant who formerly ran the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to oversee the process.

After sequestering all of Regnerus’s correspondence and conducting both written and oral interviews with him and his accuser, Scott Rosensweig, Research Integrity Officer Robert Peterson wrote in an Aug. 24 memorandum to administrators, “None of the allegations of scientific misconduct put forth … were substantiated either by physical data, written materials, or by information provided during the interviews.

“Since no evidence was provided to indicate that the behavior at issue rose to a level of scientific misconduct, no formal investigation is warranted.”

There was not even enough evidence of misconduct for an investigation. Regnerus was very thorough and conscientious in the conduct of research – it was original, quality work. And this is in liberal Austin, no less! But will this be reported in the media as much as the accusations were? Not bloody likely.

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Commentary

U.S. government persecutes pastor for helping bio-mom escape with daughter

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Dr. Lydia McGrew writes about it on What’s Wrong With The World blog.

Excerpt:

Several years ago I blogged here about the case of Lisa Miller. Brief background summary: Lisa Miller entered into a lesbian civil union in Vermont with Janet Jenkins. During this civil union, Miller conceived and bore a child by using a sperm donor. The little girl, Isabella, was only eighteen months old when Miller left the relationship and formally broke it up legally. Miller converted to Christianity, left the homosexual lifestyle behind her, and fled to Virginia to keep her child away from Jenkins, who represented all that she had repented of and was now leaving behind. Jenkins, let us bear in mind, is not in any way related to Isabella and has not lived with her since she was eighteen months old.

Vermont courts, to whom the custody decision was ultimately given, treated the unrelated lesbian Jenkins as Isabella’s “other mother” and insisted on unsupervised visitation, even though Jenkins was, from Isabella’s perspective, a stranger. Isabella made some of these visits but was so upset by them (and alleged that Jenkins had bathed with her naked) that Miller refused to allow any more such visits with Jenkins, who had neither any natural claim on Isabella whatsoever nor any relationship with her. Eventually the custody judge decided to punish Miller for her intransigence concerning the unsupervised visits and ordered that Miller give Isabella over entirely, full custody, to live in Vermont with Jenkins. Late in 2009, Miller fled with her daughter, then age seven.

So, the courts gave full custody of the daughter to the partner of the biological mother. A woman who has no biological connection to the child, over the wishes of the child’s biological mother. This is the stuff that Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is always warning us about. She wasn’t kidding.

And now, here’s the latest news about that story, from that same post:

Lisa Miller and Isabella got away successfully to Nicaragua, which does not have an extradition agreement with the United States for cases of kidnapping, or as in this case, “kidnapping.” Here, the “kidnapping” involves a mother trying to save her own child from being turned over to an entirely unrelated female sodomite to be raised.

As it turns out, though, the federal government joined in the fray. They have now caught and convicted Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller (no relation) of helping Lisa Miller in her escape. It sounds to my ears like there could be more trials and convictions on the horizon as well. Meanwhile, Jenkins has filed civil suit against the pastor and at least one other person who helped Lisa Miller to escape. Even if Jenkins never gets her trophy-child, her quest for revenge will not cease until she has destroyed the lives of all those who helped to thwart her pursuit of Lisa Miller and Isabella.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse has argued that far from getting the government out of marriage, government’s decision to equate same-sex unions with opposite sex unions would open all kinds of government intervention into families.