The government is footing the bill for Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who is currently serving a 35-year sentence for participating in a national security secrets leak, to undergo gender reassignment surgery while in prison.
According to Manning’s lawyers, Manning ended a hunger strike that began last week after the Army said it would provide the surgery, USA Today reports. Previously, Manning sued the Army for not providing hormone treatment, causing the Army to initiate hormone therapy.
When Manning’s gender reassignment surgery will transpire is still in question, but Manning is meeting with doctors this month.
To be clear, this surgery isn’t cheap and American taxpayers could be picking up the tab, as they are with Manning. Estimates for male-to-female transitions range from $7,000 to $24,000 and female-to-male reassignment can exceed $50,000. Even so, efforts to include gender-transition healthcare services to military members is gaining momentum.
Tricare, the military’s healthcare program, is forging ahead in paying for some gender-transition health care services to military family members and retirees, despite the fact the official policy — scheduled for finalization in October — hasn’t been authorized yet.
“It is no longer justifiable to categorically exclude and not cover currently accepted medically and psychologically necessary treatments for gender dysphoria (such as psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, and hormone replacement therapy) that are not otherwise excluded by statute,” the proposed regulation states.
Raquel Bono, Navy Vice Admiral and head of the Defense Health Agency, said last month she will not wait for the final policy and, instead, is having Tricare proceed in administering these services.
Although Tricare and the Veterans Health Department are explicitly prohibited from covering sex-change surgeries, Democratic lawmakers are requesting the Department of Veterans Affairs to include covering gender reassignment surgery for transgender veterans.
Just this week, a group of six House members submitted a letter asking for sex-reassignment surgeries to be covered.
“We write to you today as members of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus Transgender Equality Task Force to urge the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to move swiftly to ensure access to medically necessary surgical care for transgender veterans,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald. “We urge you to move forward with publishing a proposed rule to remove the arbitrary and outdated restriction that prohibits VA from providing medical services to treat gender dysphoria.”
In June 2016, Defense Secretary Ash Carter eliminated the ban prohibiting transgender individuals from openly serving in the military. (For more from the author of “Your Tax Dollars Are Going to Fund This Army Prisoner’s Sex Reassignment Surgery” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/average-size-jail-cell_6e821c6fbe267eb4.jpg7881400Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-14 23:43:132016-09-14 23:43:13Your Tax Dollars Are Going to Fund This Army Prisoner’s Sex Reassignment Surgery
With the op-ed “Where in the Bible does it say you can’t be transgender? Nowhere” (Aug. 26), the Washington Post apparently feels no embarrassment from publishing such a poorly executed attempt at exegesis of the biblical text (this from 3 weeks ago; it’s hard to keep up with nonsense). I had already responded on Aug. 15 to a badly done New York Times op-ed that claimed that the Bible depicts God as transgendered and affirms gender fluidity. The WashPost op-ed arrives at a similar ideological objective (i.e., claiming that the Bible is not opposed to transgenderism) but from a different angle. Rather than make the case that the Bible endorses transgenderism it attempts to argue that “there is not a single verse in scripture that discusses transgender identities.”
The author is a certain Eliel Cruz who is identified as “a bisexual Christian writer” and “executive director of Faith in America” (a organization which, according to his bio, is “dedicated to ending religious based bigotry towards LGBT people”). I see no evidence that he has any academic expertise in the field of biblical studies (just the kind of person the Post is eager to get?). His three arguments are as follows.
Cross-Dressing or Transgenderism: What’s the Difference?
Cruz claims that the reference in Deuteronomy 22:5 women who wear men’s clothes and men who wear women’s clothes as “an abomination (abhorrent, detestable) to Yahweh your God” is about cross-dressing and not transgenderism.
In the ancient Near East, this is a distinction without much of a difference. Almost certainly at least some of these figures (probably most of the men) were connected with the indictment of the so-called qedeshim: literally, “cult figures” or self-named “sacred ones,” connected with idolatrous cult shrines (Deut 23:17-18). These men thought themselves possessed by an androgynous deity. As self-perceived women in male bodies they attempted to erase their masculine identity with feminine dress, manners, occupations, and sometimes even castration.
Comparable Mesopotamian figures were known as the assinu, kurgarru, and kulu’u. A later manifestation were the Greco-Roman figures known as the galli, connected with the Great Mother Cybele. In Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History (Judges thru 2 Kings) they were condemned for having committed an “abomination” (1 Kings 14:24; 15:12 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7). The biblical writers rejected any presumption that these birth-males were females.
Centuries later the apostle Paul referred to the malakoi (“soft men”; a Greek term, the Latin equivalent of which was molles), men who deliberately feminized themselves, sometimes to attract male sex partners, through dress, mannerisms, hairstyle, and at times even castration. This is a more generic term and necessitates no cultic connection (though in some cases there was such a connection). Paul listed such figures among those who, without repentance, would not inherit the kingdom of God.
Binary Significance
Cruz then claims that Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them,” carries no binary implications. He cites the use of “and” in the phrase “the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1) and in the reference to God as “the alpha and the omega” (Rev 1:8) as including “everything in between.”
Yet the understanding of the phrase “male and female” as implying a sexual binary is all too obvious. In the few times that this exact phrase is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible it always indicates a sexual pair: Gen 5:2 (genealogy fulfilling command to “be fruitful and multiply,” similar to 1:27) and 6:19; 7:3, 9, 16 (animals going into the ark “two by two”).
According to Mark 10:5-9 (parallel in Matt 19:4-6), Jesus cited “male and female he created them” in Gen 1:27 alongside Gen 2:24 (“For this reason a man shall … be joined to his woman and the two shall become one flesh”) in order to establish a principle about duality of number in sexual relations. In short, Jesus predicated a limitation of two persons to a sexual union on the foundation of a divinely designed complementary sexual pair.
A century before Jesus the Jewish sectarian group known as the Essenes likewise applied the same principle from Gen 1:27, this time in connection with the duality of number in the Noah’s ark narrative (“two by two … male and female”), to reject polygamy among their adherents, calling the male-female requirement for sexual relations “the foundation of creation.” Jesus went further in applying the principle to a rejection of divorce/remarriage for any cause.
So Jesus clearly saw binary significance to the phrase “male and female.” His citation of Gen 2:24 confirms this, when he includes a reference to “the two” (man and woman) becoming “one flesh.” Mention of “the two” is missing from the Hebrew text of Gen 2:24 but all the other versions (Greek Septuagint translation, Aramaic Targums, Latin Vulgate, Samaritan Pentateuch) pick it up as obviously implied in the original.
Birth Sex, Gender and Intersex
Cruz also appeals to a distinction between birth sex and self-constructed “gender.” Yet he ignores the fact that biblical authors reject the idea that a self-constructed “gender” that differs from birth sex is in any sense true.
Cruz appeals to the “intersex” also, even though this is a separate issue from so-called “transgenderism.” The appeal to “intersex individuals” is akin to an appeal to conjoined twins as a basis for rejecting a standard of monogamy. It makes as a basis for imploding the entire standard an extraordinarily rare exception, where something goes developmentally wrong in nature’s processes (e.g., an inhibition of testosterone production or sensitivity, or an XXY in an essentially male child). The overwhelming percentage of the tiny subset of the population often categorized as “intersex” do not in fact straddle equally between two sexes but are marked predominantly as one sex or the other in terms of the possession (or lack) of a mostly functioning X chromosome.
When Jesus discusses briefly “eunuchs (eunouchoi) who were born so from the womb of their mother” (Matt 19:12) he rejects neither the binary male-female foundation for marriage nor the principle of duality of number secondarily derived from the foundation that he had just established (19:3-9). On the contrary, he presumes that if “born eunuchs” cannot enter the covenant of marriage as “men” they must remain celibate.
It is lamentable that the Washington Post is more interested in propaganda for the “transgender” cause than in credible scholarship. If they don’t like what the Judeo-Christian Scriptures have to say, then they should just say so rather than attempt to distort the witness of these texts in order to service their tainted ideological objectives. When the ends justify the means, all trust is lost in the integrity of the alleged journalism. (For more from the author of “Memo to the Washington Post: The Bible Does Reject ‘Transgender’ Behavior” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/5811115037_d41365b3c0_b-2.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-13 00:43:342016-09-18 01:54:18Memo to the Washington Post: The Bible Does Reject ‘Transgender’ Behavior
Churches in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have grave concerns about a new anti-discrimination law that could force congregations to accommodate the transgender community – under the threat of fines and jail time.
The law, which goes into effect in October, does not specifically mention churches or other houses of worship. However, the attorney general, along with the government commission assigned to enforce the law, have a different point of view. Attorney General Maura Healey wrote that places of public accommodation include: “auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, and other places of public gathering.”
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the commission responsible for enforcing the anti-discrimination law, reinforced that interpretation in a document titled, “Gender Identity Guidance.”
“Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the document states. “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”
The Massachusetts Family Institute has launched a petition drive to repeal the law – warning that pastors and parishioners could find themselves in serious legal trouble.
“The law bootstraps the idea of gender identity onto existing Civil Rights laws,” MFI president Andrew Beckwith tells me. “Even having a sign in your church that says “This Bathroom is for Biological Women Only” could subject the pastor of the church to up to 30 days in jail.”
Beckwith said under the law, the sign would be treated the same as if it had said, “Whites Only.” He said the MFI reached out to the attorney general’s office for clarification on the law and they were instructed to “get an attorney.” “Churches are left not knowing whether it applies to them or not,” he said.
So who is going to be deciding what is and what is not a secular event?
“It shows religious tone deafness on the part of whoever is writing these regulations,” Beckwith said. “Any pastor I talk to is going to say their services and ministries and programs are open to the general public. That’s the whole point – to spread the Gospel and minister to the whole community.”
That’s a fact.
I’ve seen revival break out over the potato salad — during a dinner-on-the-grounds at a Baptist church in Mississippi.
Beckwith said he hopes churches will join their campaign to repeal the law — warning that “it’s going to have very real consequences on religious liberty.” “If the church doesn’t defend itself from these attacks on religious liberty, they are going to cease having the ability to make the pastoral decisions they need to be able to make,” he said.
I reached out to the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination and they told me Commissioner Sunila Thomas George said there’s really no need for alarm. “By and large, places of worship are not held to the Massachusetts Anti-Discrimination statutes that deal with places of public accommodation,” she said. “We are not by any means saying that the anti-discrimination laws absolutely apply to them.”
But, they could.
“There are circumstances where places of worship hold activities at their facilities or in their buildings that are purely secular events,” she said. Among the activities that the state considers secular are soup kitchens, day care, housing, and polling places. “In those circumstances, places of worship could be seen as open to the public,” Ms. George told me. “The operative word is ‘could.’”
So let’s use MCAD’s example of a church spaghetti supper. Under the state’s guidelines, that supper could fall under the anti-discrimination law.
I asked MCAD what the church would need to do to comply with the law.
“You would want to make sure that people are treated with regard to their gender identity and treated fairly and equitably,” Ms. George told me.
So what, specifically, does that mean?
“As long as people who are transitioning or who have transitioned are able to use a restroom they identity with, I think you are complying with the law,” she said. “You would want to make sure they are accommodated. In other words, churches that hold spaghetti suppers would have to let men who identify as women use the same bathrooms as the little Sunday school girls.
The Baptist Convention of New England is among the religious groups in the region opposing the law – warning that it’s an attack on the First Amendment. “Any attempt by a small vocal activist group to strip churches of that right should be vehemently opposed by all people,” executive director Terry Dorsett told Baptist Press. “If they can take a church’s right to practice their faith away, imagine what else they can do.”
For starters, they can tell good churchgoing folks what they can do with their spaghetti and meatballs. (For more from the author of “Churches Could Be Forced to Comply With Transgender Law” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/1280px-Inside_of_the_Church_of_Santi_Apostoli_Florence.jpg8531280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-13 00:22:142016-09-13 00:22:14Churches Could Be Forced to Comply With Transgender Law
The Department of Justice released a new police training video Thursday that demonstrates how to have “respectful, professional, and safe” interactions with members of the transgender community.
The 12-minute video was created with the goal of improving relations between law enforcement and the LGBT community in the hope of reducing cases of alleged discrimination. It presents a range of scenarios that show how officers should respond when they encounter an individual who identifies as transgender.
“When someone’s name or gender on a license is different than what you expect, how do you react? Is this person committing identify theft? Are they a fugitive? Possibly they are just transgender,” Cpl. Evan Baxter of Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Department explains in the clip.
In such instances, police are encouraged to ask the individual, “Do you prefer if I call you ma’am or sir?”
“Hey, I don’t have to be in the room to know what just happened. Someone snickered, laughed or made a joke,” the narrator addresses viewers after “Scenario 1” in the video. “Trust me, I know; I’m a cop, too. As police officers, we use humor to deal with things that make us feel uncomfortable or afraid […] To outsiders, it’s perceived as unprofessional and disrespectful.”
A subsequent scenario in the video demonstrates what an officer should do in cases involving a transgender person using a restroom that corresponds to the opposite sex. In the video, a mother with a baby calls 911 after encountering a man in the woman’s restroom.
“I was in the restroom but I’m a woman,” the man tells the officer. The officer then apologizes and leaves with no further questions asked.
The clip stresses the importance of remaining courteous and keeping questions relevant to the situation in question.
“Transgender Americans, like all Americans, deserve to be treated with courtesy and respect by law enforcement officers,” Paul Monteiro, acting director of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service said in a press release. “The information provided in this video will help strengthen the relationship between police and the transgender community, allowing for more effective investigations and safer encounters for officers and citizens alike.”
Watch:
(For more from the author of “DOJ Releases Video That Teaches Cops How to Interact With Transgender People” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/police-378255_960_720-1.jpg677960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-08-27 00:04:442016-08-27 00:04:44DOJ Releases Video That Teaches Cops How to Interact With Transgender People
The Obama administration was barred by a judge from enforcing a directive that U.S. public schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity.
A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday sided with Texas and 12 other states that argued the administration’s policy usurps local control and threatens students’ safety and privacy.
The use of public bathrooms and locker rooms by transgender people has become the latest front in civil rights struggles between social conservatives and the administration following battles over same-sex marriage and military service by openly gay members of the armed forces in which President Barack Obama has sided with gay-rights advocates.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor came after the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 3 temporarily blocked an order that would let a transgender student use the boys’ bathrooms during his senior year at a Virginia high school.
In that case, the justices granted a request from the Gloucester County school board, which said the lower court order would have caused “severe disruption” when school started in September and likely prompted parents to transfer their children to other institutions. The district said boys’ restrooms were reserved for students who were “biological” males. (Read more from “Obama’s Transgender Student Bathroom Policy Blocked by Judge” HERE)
The U.S. military’s Tricare health care system now covers transgender military family members and retirees, despite the official policy not yet going live, a top official said.
“I’m not going to wait for the final policy,” Navy Vice Adm. Raquel Bono, head of the Defense Health Agency, said in a wide-ranging interview with Military.com on Thursday atJoint Base Elmendorf-Richardson . . .
The policy, published for public comment in the Federal Register in February, will allow for hormone therapy and mental health counseling for “gender dysphoria,” the clinical term for those who identify as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth. Tricare is prohibited by law from covering sex-change surgery.
A ban on openly serving transgender troops was lifted by Defense Department officials in June. By Oct. 1, officials will issue a handbook for commanders and all those affected by the new policy, as well as medical guidance for providing transition care to transgender troops. As part of the new policy, military medical facilities will provide hormone treatment, counseling and sex-change surgery when deemed “medically necessary” . . .
In the meantime, Bono said, Tricare is working with its regional contractors to grant approval for transgender treatment that will be covered under the new policy. If the contractor will not approve it, the admiral said she will do so herself. (Read more from “Tricare Now Covering Transgender Treatment Options” HERE)
A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.
Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows and does not show about sexuality and gender.
The major takeaway, as the editor of the journal explains, is that “some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence.”
Here are four of the report’s most important conclusions:
The belief that sexual orientation is an innate, biologically fixed human property—that people are ‘born that way’—is not supported by scientific evidence.
Likewise, the belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex—so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’—is not supported by scientific evidence.
Only a minority of children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood. There is no evidence that all such children should be encouraged to become transgender, much less subjected to hormone treatments or surgery.
Non-heterosexual and transgender people have higher rates of mental health problems (anxiety, depression, suicide), as well as behavioral and social problems (substance abuse, intimate partner violence), than the general population. Discrimination alone does not account for the entire disparity.
McHugh, whom the editor of The New Atlantis describes as “arguably the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century,” is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was for 25 years the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was during his tenure as psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins that he put an end to sex reassignment surgery there, after a study launched at Hopkins revealed that it didn’t have the benefits for which doctors and patients had long hoped.
Implications for Policy
The report focuses exclusively on what scientific research shows and does not show. But this science can have implications for public policy.
The report reviews rigorous research showing that ‘only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.’
Take, for example, our nation’s recent debates over transgender policies in schools. One of the consistent themes of the report is that science does not support the claim that “gender identity” is a fixed property independent of biological sex, but rather that a combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely shape how individuals experience and express themselves when it comes to sex and gender.
The report also discusses the reality of neuroplasticity: that all of our brains can and do change throughout our lives (especially, but not only, in childhood) in response to our behavior and experiences. These changes in the brain can, in turn, influence future behavior.
This provides more reason for concern over the Obama administration’s recent transgender school policies. Beyond the privacy and safety concerns, there is thus also the potential that such policies will result in prolonged identification as transgender for students who otherwise would have naturally grown out of it.
The report reviews rigorous research showing that “only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.” Policymakers should be concerned with how misguided school policies might encourage students to identify as girls when they are boys, and vice versa, and might result in prolonged difficulties. As the report notes, “There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”
Beyond school policies, the report raises concerns about proposed medical intervention in children. Mayer and McHugh write: “We are disturbed and alarmed by the severity and irreversibility of some interventions being publicly discussed and employed for children.”
They continue: “We are concerned by the increasing tendency toward encouraging children with gender identity issues to transition to their preferred gender through medical and then surgical procedures.” But as they note, “There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents.”
Findings on Transgender Issues
The same goes for social or surgical gender transitions in general. Mayer and McHugh note that the “scientific evidence summarized suggests we take a skeptical view toward the claim that sex reassignment procedures provide the hoped for benefits or resolve the underlying issues that contribute to elevated mental health risks among the transgender population.” Even after sex reassignment surgery, patients with gender dysphoria still experience poor outcomes:
Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.
Mayer and McHugh urge researchers and physicians to work to better “understand whatever factors may contribute to the high rates of suicide and other psychological and behavioral health problems among the transgender population, and to think more clearly about the treatment options that are available.” They continue:
In reviewing the scientific literature, we find that almost nothing is well understood when we seek biological explanations for what causes some individuals to state that their gender does not match their biological sex. … Better research is needed, both to identify ways by which we can help to lower the rates of poor mental health outcomes and to make possible more informed discussion about some of the nuances present in this field.
Policymakers should take these findings very seriously. For example, the Obama administration recently finalized a new Department of Health and Human Services mandate that requires all health insurance plans under Obamacare to cover sex reassignment treatments and all relevant physicians to perform them. The regulations will force many physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers to participate in sex reassignment surgeries and treatments, even if doing so violates their moral and religious beliefs or their best medical judgment.
Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial health care issues, the regulations endorse and enforce one highly contested and scientifically unsupported view. As Mayer and McHugh urge, more research is needed, and physicians need to be free to practice the best medicine.
Stigma, Prejudice Don’t Explain Tragic Outcomes
The report also highlights that people who identify as LGBT face higher risks of adverse physical and mental health outcomes, such as “depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and most alarmingly, suicide.” The report summarizes some of those findings:
Members of the non-heterosexual population are estimated to have about 1.5 times higher risk of experiencing anxiety disorders than members of the heterosexual population, as well as roughly double the risk of depression, 1.5 times the risk of substance abuse, and nearly 2.5 times the risk of suicide.
Members of the transgender population are also at higher risk of a variety of mental health problems compared to members of the non-transgender population. Especially alarmingly, the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41 percent, compared to under 5 percent in the overall U.S. population.
What accounts for these tragic outcomes? Mayer and McHugh investigate the leading theory—the “social stress model”—which proposes that “stressors like stigma and prejudice account for much of the additional suffering observed in these subpopulations.”
But they argue that the evidence suggests that this theory “does not seem to offer a complete explanation for the disparities in the outcomes.” It appears that social stigma and stress alone cannot account for the poor physical and mental health outcomes that LGBT-identified people face.
As a result, they conclude that “More research is needed to uncover the causes of the increased rates of mental health problems in the LGBT subpopulations.” And they call on all of us work to “alleviate suffering and promote human health and flourishing.”
Finally, the report notes that scientific evidence does not support the claim that people are “born that way” with respect to sexual orientation. The narrative pushed by Lady Gaga and others is not supported by the science. A combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely account for an individual’s sexual attractions, desires, and identity, and “there are no compelling causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation.”
Furthermore, the scientific research shows that sexual orientation is more fluid than the media suggests. The report notes that “Longitudinal studies of adolescents suggest that sexual orientation may be quite fluid over the life course for some people, with one study estimating that as many as 80 percent of male adolescents who report same-sex attractions no longer do so as adults.”
Findings Contradict Claims in Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling
These findings—that scientific research does not support the claim that sexual orientation is innate and immutable—directly contradict claims made by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in last year’s Obergefell ruling. Kennedy wrote, “their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment” and “in more recent years have psychiatrists and others recognized that sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable.”
But the science does not show this.
While the marriage debate was about the nature of what marriage is, incorrect scientific claims about sexual orientation were consistently used in the campaign to redefine marriage.
In the end, Mayer and McHugh observe that much about sexuality and gender remains unknown. They call for honest, rigorous, and dispassionate research to help better inform public discourse and, more importantly, sound medical practice.
As this research continues, it’s important that public policy not declare scientific debates over, or rush to legally enforce and impose contested scientific theories. As Mayer and McHugh note, “Everyone—scientists and physicians, parents and teachers, lawmakers and activists—deserves access to accurate information about sexual orientation and gender identity.”
We all must work to foster a culture where such information can be rigorously pursued and everyone—whatever their convictions, and whatever their personal situation—is treated with the civility, respect, and generosity that each of us deserves. (For more from the author of “Almost Everything the Media Tells You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/8148105584_780ee9e2f6_b.jpg7241024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-08-21 23:37:392016-08-21 23:37:39Almost Everything the Media Tells You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong
Barack Obama is set to finalize a federal rule requiring many women’s shelters to admit men who identify as “transgender,” potentially placing abused women and children at risk of being victimized again.
If enacted, all homeless shelters – including battered women’s shelters – that receive federal funding would have to allow people to use the homeless shelter of the sex with which they identify, regardless of their appearance, anatomy, or the “complaints of other shelter residents.”
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro proposed the so-called “Equal Access Rule” last October. Media outlets say it will become final next month.
“[T]he provider may not ask questions or otherwise seek information or documentation concerning the person’s anatomy,” nor refuse to allow anyone a bed “because the client’s appearance or behavior does not conform with gender stereotypes,” it reads.
Although the shelter “may consider…whether a particular housing assignment would ensure health and safety” on a “case-by-case basis,” it may not base its decisions solely on the “complaints of other shelter residents.” (Read more from “Obama to Force Women’s Shelter to Admit ‘Transgender’ Men” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/8216393551_acc6d4ef64_b-1.jpg7311024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-08-17 01:29:392016-08-17 01:29:39Obama to Force Women’s Shelter to Admit ‘Transgender’ Men
The U.S. Supreme Court signaled an interest in taking on the transgender bathroom debate on Wednesday, granting a Virginia school system temporary permission to keep its bathrooms separated by biological sex.
In a 5-3 vote, the justices issued a stay in the case involving a transgender student in Gloucester County who is suing his school board to gain access to the boys’ restrooms. The stay halts a lower court’s order that said the school board must allow the transgender teen, Gavin Grimm, into the bathroom that corresponds with the student’s gender identity.
Gavin, 17, was born female but now identifies as a male.
If the Gloucester County school board’s petition for the Supreme Court to hear the case is denied, the stay will terminate automatically, and Gavin will be allowed to use the boys’ bathroom. If the court decides to take the case, the stay will remain in effect until the justices reach a final decision.
The lawsuit alleges that by prohibiting Gavin from using the boys’ restrooms, the school board’s policy violates Title IX, the federal statute that bans discrimination on the basis of sex.
The U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia initially rejected that argument, and sided with the school board’s claim that Title IX does not protect against discrimination based on gender identity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit disagreed, and issued an injunction that required the school to allow transgender students to use restrooms in accordance to their gender identity.
Some in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement downplayed Wednesday’s decision, calling it “just a temporary delay.”
“Across the country, courts and policymakers are recognizing that discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination,” Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said in a prepared statement. “We are confident that if and when this issue reaches the Supreme Court, the court will affirm that recognition.”
Conservatives, however, call the decision a significant step in their direction.
“It’s significant that the Supreme Court said we’re going to put a hold on that—we’re going to preserve the status quo as it’s always been in society, as it’s always been in schools,” Jeremy Tedesco, a lawyer at the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal. “That boys use boys’ restrooms and girls use girls’ restrooms.”
The implications, Tedesco added, could reach far beyond Gavin and other students in Gloucester County.
In directing schools nationwide to open their showers, bathrooms, and locker rooms to students of the opposite biological sex, the Obama administration cited the Gloucester case.
The Department of Education wrote that its interpretation “is consistent with courts’ and other agencies’ interpretations of federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination,” and linked to the case.
A total of 24 states are now challenging the legality of the administration’s mandate, in addition to dozens of private legal battles playing out nationwide.
“The Department of Education—in all the litigation that’s going on across the country and in their major, chief mandate that they sent out nationally to all the schools saying that Title IX requires schools to allow students of one sex to enter locker rooms and bathrooms of students of the opposite sex—they’re all relying on the Gloucester decision from the 4th Circuit to say that’s required,” Tedesco said. “What the Supreme Court has done is thrown that decision into serious doubt.”
Tedesco, who is involved in several of these challenges, said the decision is “a really important outcome” for Alliance Defending Freedom’s case in Illinois.
In that case, 50 families in the Chicago area are suing the Department of Education and the Justice Department for threatening to take away federal funding if the school does not comply with the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX.
Lawyers for the Obama administration, Tedesco said, “have been citing the Gloucester decision over and over again for why they should win.”
Now, he said, “it’s going to be a lot more difficult for them to rely on that case, with the Supreme Court putting the entire decision on hold and calling it into question.”
Gloucester County, located about 140 miles south of Washington, D.C., and just north of Newport News, Virginia, has more than 5,000 students in its eight public schools.
The Gloucester County school board welcomed Wednesday’s decision, saying in a press release that it “continues to believe that its resolution of this complex matter fully considered the interests of all students and parents in the Gloucester County school system.”
Josh Block, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union representing Gavin, said he was disappointed by the decision because it will leave Gavin isolated from the rest of the student body.
In a blog post, Block wrote:
Gavin was preparing to begin his senior year with a fresh start. He would finally be able to use the restroom without being isolated. Even if the Supreme Court ultimately decides to let the lower court’s decision stand, Gavin will have had to spend most of his senior year forced to use a separate restroom from the rest of his classmates, simply because of who he is.
The high court’s four conservative-leaning justices all voted in favor of the stay. They were joined by Justice Stephen Breyer who wrote that he granted the stay “as a courtesy” in order to “preserve the status quo.”
Only four justices are needed for the Supreme Court to review a case, making it likely that the bathroom fight could be decided soon. (For more from the author of “What the Supreme Court’s Ruling Means for Transgender Bathrooms in Schools” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Gender_neutral_toilet_sign_gu.jpg7681024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-08-05 00:32:462016-08-05 00:32:46What the Supreme Court’s Ruling Means for Transgender Bathrooms in Schools
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a court order that allowed a transgendered boy to use the boy’s restroom in a Virginia high school. The decision comes amidst strong debate over whether or not self-proclaimed ‘transgendered’ individuals should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice.
The New York Times reports that the 5-3 vote, with Justice Stephen Breyer joining the conservatives on the court “as a courtesy,” blocked a court order by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit until such a time as the Supreme Court decides to hear the case itself.
The facts of the case are as follows:
The case in the Supreme Court concerns Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as a male and will soon start his senior year at Gloucester High School in southeastern Virginia. For a time, school administrators allowed Mr. Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom, but the local school board adopted a policy that required students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for their “corresponding biological genders.” The board added that “students with gender identity issues” would be allowed to use private bathrooms.
Mr. Grimm sued, and a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled the policy unlawful. A trial judge then ordered school officials to let Mr. Grimm use the boys’ bathroom.
The SCOTUS vote has overturned that decision from the Fourth Circuit.
Conservative Review Senior Editor Daniel Horowitz warned that conservatives should not be quick to take heart at the court’s decision. “While it is certainly welcome that the high court didn’t rule the other way, this is no reason to cheer the Judiciary,” Horowitz said.
“It’s bad enough there are those promoting gender bending as a matter of policy and even worse that the Fourth Circuit is mandating it as a matter of law. It would have been absolutely ludicrous for the court not to issue a stay on such a dramatic and irrevocably harmful social transformation pending the outcome of the case. It is therefore troubling that three Supreme Court justices and the Fourth Circuit wanted to even deny the stay. Either way, it’s important to remember that no federal court should ever have the authority to coerce a school district to allow opposite genders in separate-sex bathrooms, much less enshrine such a revolutionary idea into a 1972 statute or the 14th Amendment ratified in 1868.”
The fact that the court is even weighing in on whether or not individuals should be allowed to use the restroom of the opposite gender is a sign of the Left’s successful campaign in the culture war. And there’s no telling if the court will side with conservatives in the next case. (For more from the author of “SCOTUS Blocks Transgender Bathroom Order but Don’t Celebrate Yet” please click HERE)
