Tag Archives: Gaystapo

News

Supreme Court votes 6-3 to outlaw Christian for-profit organizations

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

I was hoping that we could hold off the Equality Act until at least 2021, if Biden won the election. I did not expect that we would get a light version of the Equality Act in 2020 from the Supreme Court. (Although I did something anyway last year to anticipate it). Anyway, let’s get a reaction from the scholars at the pro-marriage Daily Signal, and then see Alito’s dissent.

Excerpt:

In what dissenting Justice Samuel Alito called one of the most “brazen abuse[s]” of the Supreme Court’s authority, a six-member majority of the court led by Justice Neil Gorsuch has rewritten Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity in the definition of “sex.”

Why bother trying to pass the proposed Equality Act when you can get the justices to make law for you?

Title VII prohibits an employer from failing or refusing “to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual … because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

Gorsuch—joined by the four liberal justices, along with Chief Justice John Roberts—decided that employment decisions that take any account of an employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity necessarily entail discrimination based on sex in violation of Title VII.

I care about what this will do to me as an employee of a for-profit company. I can foresee myself having to work for an aggressive LGBT boss or co-worker, and being forced to affirm their lifestyle choices, even as they were allowed to disagree with mine.

Things would be different if I worked for a religious non-profit though, according to Christian News:

The Supreme Court, however, did express that it is “deeply concerned with preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution” and pointed to a congressional exception in the law for “religious organizations.”

It is not clear if those organizations include for-profit businesses or if the protections only extend to churches and non-profit charitable and educational groups.

However, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggested in his dissent that: “The scope of these provisions is disputed, and as interpreted by some lower courts, they provide only narrow protection”. So even if I had cleverly moved to a non-profit in anticipation of this decision, it would only be a temporary bit of safety before the LGBT fascists take over everything, and squash all dissent from the top down.

Part of me wonders how long it will take LGBT people to understands that their success in the area of sexual autonomy, (at the expensive of our religious liberty), hasn’t really obtained the satisfaction that they believed it would. Even if they manage to force all dissenters to publicly celebrate their rebellion against chastity, marriage and self-sacrificial love for children.

I think people who choose to stray away from chastity, natural marriage and self-sacrificial love for their children THINK that they will somehow end up happy in their old age. But there is no winning end game for sexual radicals. Once you lose your appearance through old age, you’re done. And trying to make a relationship last between self-centered people doesn’t work in the long run. There is no path to a stable commitment that goes through secular leftist self-centeredness.

Women’s sports is now effectively over, because transgender women (biological men) will dominate.

An ADF person wrote about that in Christian Post:

In February, three high school women athletes sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference after they were forced to compete against biological males in track. The two male athletes, who identify as girls, swept 15 Connecticut state titles that were previously held by nine different women. Because of the presence of male athletes, women have lost out on the opportunity to compete and win, as well as the potential scholarship opportunities that come from competing in front of college scouts.

It should not be surprising that biological males outrun females on the racetrack. After all, men have more muscle mass, greater bone density, and lung capacity. But when “sex” is redefined, the law’s recognition of this is important distinction may be lost.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court took a step to redefine “sex,” further jeopardizing legal protections for women and girls and failing to uphold the law as Congress wrote it.

It’s always interesting to see what happens to progressives who lose their privileges (e.g. – athletic scholarships to prestigious universities) because their own progressive convictions get enacted into law. When liberal women say “male-female distinctions are social constructs” it sounds so good to them – until they see what it really means. But now that SCOTUS has ruled, there is no going back. Any man who identifies as a woman will be able to grab up any benefit that was reserved for women, and also invade their spaces.

In cases like this, where the consequences (end of women’s sports), are so far removed from the cause (radical feminism which denies male-female distinctives), it may be hard for young feminists to even understand how their own worldview is what’s taking away their benefits and entitlements. It’s such a terrible thing when people get what they want, and it destroys them. But this happens a lot to people who deny God…. just look at all the aging, man-hating women who can’t find husbands. They won the Sexual Revolution, and they thought that post-feminism men would want the devalued version of marriage (no-fault, egalitarian, two working spouses, daycare, public schools, etc.) that they inherited as much as we liked the pre-feminism marriage of the 1950s. How foolish.

News

How would the Democrats’ “Equality Act” affect Christians and conservatives?

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21 states have SOGI anti-discrimination laws
21 states have SOGI anti-discrimination laws

I’m following this Equality Act legislation as it moves through the House of Representatives. The bill would prohibit individuals and businesses from discriminating by sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). These SOGI laws already exist at the state level, in places where Christians are being sued and coerced to affirm and celebrate gay rights.

Here is a good article from The Stream, explaining 7 ways that the law would affect you:

  1. It would penalize Americans who don’t affirm new sexual norms or gender ideology.
  2. It would compel speech.
  3. It could shut down charities.
  4. It would allow more biological males to defeat girls in sports.
  5. It could be used to coerce medical professionals.
  6. It could lead to more parents losing custody of their children.
  7. It would enable sexual assault.

Let’s take a quick look at some examples of these changes already in progress.

I’m not covering #1, because everyone knows about the case against the Washington state florist, and the case against the Colorado baker and the case against the New Mexico wedding photographers.

For #2, here’s an example:

Virginia high school teacher Peter Vlaming lost his job for something he did not say.

A county school board voted unanimously to fire the veteran teacher over the objections of his students after he refused to comply with administrators’ orders to use masculine pronouns in referring to a female student who identifies as transgender.

If this goes national, I could get into the same sort of trouble at work for misgendering a co-worker or a customer.

For #3, I’d already heard about how foster parent and adoption agencies in some SOGI anti-discrimination states shut down because they couldn’t place children in traditional-marriage homes.

Here’s a different example:

In Anchorage, Alaska, a biological male born Timothy Paul Coyle goes by the name of Samantha Amanda Coyle. On two occasions, Coyle tried to gain access to the city’s Downtown Soup Kitchen Hope Center, a shelter for homeless, abused, and trafficked women.

In one attempt, authorities said, Coyle was inebriated and had gotten into a fight with a staffer at another shelter, so Hope Center staff paid Coyle’s fare to the emergency room to receive medical attention. Coyle sued the center for “gender identity discrimination.”

If thise goes national, you can expect that any social services organization would be charged with discrimination for any attempt to separate out men from women in bathrooms, showers, sleeping ares, etc.

For #4, we know already that biological males are identifying as women, and now biological women are unable to compete with them to win any prizes.

Here’s an example of #5, where medical professionals can be coerced to perform sex-change surgeries:

Under state sexual orientation and gender identity laws, individuals who identify as transgender have sued Catholic hospitals in California and New Jersey for declining to perform hysterectomies on otherwise healthy women who wanted to pursue gender transition.

For #6, I’ve blogged recently about how Canada allows the government to seize children from parents who disagree with gay rights and transgender transitioning.

But it happens in the USA, too:

In Ohio, a judge removed a biological girl from her parents’ custody after they declined to help her “transition” to male with testosterone supplements.

After the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital’s Transgender Health Clinic recommended these treatments for the girl’s gender dysphoria, the parents wanted to pursue counseling instead. Then the county’s family services agency charged the parents with abuse and neglect, and the judge terminated their custody.

Similar cases are proceeding through the courts with children as young as 6 years old.

And for number #7, I’ve blogged before about sexual assaults in bathrooms and other places by transgender women (biological men).

Here’s an example:

A complaint under investigation by federal education officials alleges that a boy who identifies as “gender fluid” at Oakhurst Elementary School in Decatur, Georgia, sexually assaulted Pascha Thomas’ 5-year-old daughter in a girls’ restroom. The boy had access to the girls’ restroom because of Decatur City Schools’ transgender restroom policy.

School authorities refused to change the policy even after Thomas reported the assault. Eventually, she decided to remove her daughter from school for the girl’s emotional well-being and physical safety.

As in all the examples mentioned, if the Equality Act became law, like the Democrats want it to, then any of these things could happen to you, if you decline to celebrate or participate in the gay agenda.

Although the Constitution lays out rights, those rights don’t matter to Democrats, your exercise of those rights makes people engaged in LGBT lifestyles feel unhappy. Their unhappy feelings trump your Constitution rights. At least that’s the case if the Democrats pass their bills, and appoint their judges to the courts.

News

Supreme Court sides with Christian baker against secular left fascists and ACLU

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

On Monday, the Supreme Court finally ruled on one of the cases where Christian bakers were persecuted by gay couples and gay rights activitists who wanted to use the power of the government to control the behavior of Christians. Basically, the gay rights activists wanted Christians to act like non-Christians on moral issues. They were using the power of the state to force their morality on Christians. It was the height of intolerance and bigotry.

Here is the first article from Fox News that I’m linking to, written by Kristen Waggoner. Kristen is lead counsel on this Colorado case, as well as the Washington state case against the florist Barronelle Stutzman.

Excerpt:

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of cake artist Jack Phillips, saying the Colorado Civil Rights Commission unjustly punished him when it ordered Jack to create a custom wedding cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. As the court said, “[t]he neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here …. The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”

You’ll hear a lot of lies about the case from the mainstream media.

Here’s the truth:

Jack has never refused to serve any person based on who they are or what they look like. Everyone is welcome in his shop—even the two men who sued him. In fact, he told those men that, even though he couldn’t create a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex marriage, he would be happy to sell them anything else in his shop or design a cake for them for a different occasion.

Over the years, Jack has declined to create many custom cakes because of the messages they express. If you’re looking for a ghoulish Halloween cake, a boozy bachelorette-themed dessert, or a cake celebrating a divorce—Masterpiece Cakeshop isn’t your place.

Here’s what the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ordered Jack to do:

The commission’s order requires cake artist Jack Phillips and his staff at Masterpiece Cakeshop to design cakes for same-sex celebrations, forces him to re-educate his staff that Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act means that artists must endorse same-sex marriage regardless of their religious beliefs, compels him to implement new policies to comply with the commission’s order, and requires him to file quarterly “compliance” reports for two years. The reports must include the number of patrons declined a wedding cake or any other product and state the reason for doing so to ensure he has fully eliminated his religious beliefs from his business.

Here’s an example of the hostility to Christianity of the Colorado commissioners:

Commissioner Diann Rice makes the following comment just before denying Phillips’ request to temporarily suspend the commission’s re-education order:

“I would also like to reiterate what we said in…the last meeting [concerning Jack Phillips]. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust… I mean, we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use – to use their religion to hurt others.”

The Commissioner certainly wasn’t shy about ramming her secular leftist ideology down Jack’s throat, and with the full power of the secular state behind it. But she wasn’t willing to allow Jack to live according to his beliefs. He had to be forced to accept her beliefs and her morality. At gunpoint, really.

Another prominent defender of liberty is David French, who used to work for the ADF, and is now at ACLJ. He wrote about the case for National Review. He addresses the all-important question about what we can expect from future rulings. Will this decision apply broadly or narrowly?

He writes:

[…][T]he Court focused on Phillips’s second claim, holding (by a 7–2 margin) that Colorado violated his right to free exercise of religion when it held him in violation of state public-accommodation law. Justice Kennedy focused on two critical aspects of the case to support his ruling. He first condemned anti-religious comments made by state commissioners during the hearings before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. He especially singled out a commissioner’s claim that “freedom of religion” has been used to “justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history,” including slavery and the Holocaust. The commissioner called Phillips’s religious-freedom claim “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use.”

[…]Had Kennedy stopped his opinion at that point, Phillips’s victory would have been important, but profoundly limited. The obvious response would be for the commissioners to reconsider the case, cleanse their rhetoric of outright hostility, deliver the same result on a cleaner record, and put the more difficult free-speech claim right back in the Court’s lap. But Kennedy didn’t stop. He found a separate ground for concluding that Colorado was motivated by anti-religious animus, and that separate ground will make it difficult for states to take aim at “offensive” religious exercise, even when it occurs in a commercial context.

It turns out that the state of Colorado had protected the right of bakers to refuse to create cakes with explicitly anti-gay messages.

[…]All bakers — regardless of religion — have the same rights and obligations. At the same time, gay and religious customers enjoy equal rights under state public-accommodation statutes. Any ruling the commission imposes will have to apply on the same basis to different litigants, regardless of faith and regardless of the subjective “offensiveness” of the message.

This is a severe blow to the state. It hoped for a ruling declaring that the cake wasn’t protected expression and a free-exercise analysis that simply ratified the public-accommodation law as a “neutral law of general applicability.” Such a ruling would have permitted the favoritism on display in this case. It would have granted state authorities broad discretion to elevate favored messages and suppress dissent, all while operating under the fiction that they weren’t suppressing protected expression or religious exercise.

It was an excellent idea for whoever asked for those anti-gay cakes to do that so that we would know that the law was not being enforced equally. Because of that, we got a broad ruling that will be applicable elsewhere. It’s not everything we wanted, but it’s more than I expected.