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The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday that asked the Court to expand the sex discrimination protections in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to cover homosexuals and transgenders.
Justice Neil Gorsuch's interchange with the attorney is revealing --it attaches value to traditional biblical beliefs and to common sense.
And it reminds us all how very important the makeup of the High Court is to our culture.
Elections have consequences, as they say.
Be informed.
The cases before the Court are: Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia; Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarada; and R.G.& G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC.
Tuesday, Justice Neil Gorsuch had an exchange with David Cole, attorney for Aimee Stephens, who was William Stephens for the 6 years he worked at the funeral home. He worked as an apprentice, a director, and an embalmer.
The EEOC funeral case centers on a man---Stephens---who was fired after he announced he had changed his name and would be coming to work as a woman. The business's sex-specific dress code required women to wear skirts as their work uniform.
During the oral arguments, the attorney for Stephens, David Cole, had an exchange with Justice Gorsuch.
The issue.
Stevens lawyer: "Stephens would have been fired even if he'd complied with the dress code for women because he was a man."
Gorsuch responded:
I guess I — I’d just like you to have a chance to respond to Judge Lynch in his thoughtful dissent [from a lower court ruling] in which he lamented everything you have before us, but suggested that something as drastic a change in this country as bathrooms in every place of employment and dress codes in every place of employment that are otherwise gender-neutral would be changed, that that — that that’s an essentially legislative decision.
Gorsuch said, "What do you say to him?"
Cole responded by repeating that "transgender people have a right to exist in the workplace," noting that there are "transgender lawyers in the courtroom today."
Gorsuch responded, "Of course there are, that's not the question, Mr. Cole. The question is a matter of the judicial role and modesty in interpreting statutes that are old."
Gorsuch explained that the case was about the "textual" review of the 1964 law, but it also has much broader social implications.
The justice said:
"At the end of the day, should he or she take into consideration the massive social upheaval that would be entailed in such a decision, and the possibility that---Congress didn't think about it. That is more effective---more appropriate a legislative rather than a judicial function?"
The activist's argument: "Homosexuality and transgenderism is normal."
Cole responded by arguing that transgenders are not disruptive. He said "federal courts of appeals have been recognizing that discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination for 20 years. There's been no upheaval."
He said, "Transgender people follow the rule that's associated with their gender identity."
Steven Schwinn, professor of law at the University of Illinois, said the court's ruling "matters deeply to the estimated 11.3 million LGBTQ adults in the United States."
The court's ruling also matters deeply to the more than 300 million of us who are not LGBTQ.
- Alexandra Desanctis wrote an article for National Review noting that "As athletic conferences embrace radical new policies, female athletes lose opportunities to compete fairly." She says even when lesbians like tennis star, Martina Navratilova, suggest that letting men compete as women isn't fair, the activists attack. Those feminists who champion LGBTQ rights, on the one hand, are silenced on the other.
The demands by the transgender activists are causing upheaval in women's sports.
- Thomas Spoehr, Director of Center for National Defense, explains why the military cannot normalize transgenderism. Excellent article. He says normally "discrimination" is an ugly word, but "discrimination has two meanings. The first and more familiar is the treatment of a person or particular group of people differently, in a way that is worse than people are normally treated. Discrimination of that sort is clearly unacceptable."
He says the other meaning of "discrimination" is "the ability to judge the quality of something, based on its difference from other, similar things."
Key takeaways are:
- Individuals with gender dysphoria experience severe anxiety at between eight and nine times the rate of individuals without gender dysphoria.
- Without this lawful ability to "discriminate," we would place our military in jeopardy of not being able to protect our nation.
- Thus far, the courts have seen fit to substitute their judgment on military enlistment criteria in place of that of the commander in chief. That's unfortunate.
He says transgenderism causes upheaval in the military.
He is responding to Congress blocking the President from banning transgenders from the military.
Matt Barber writes;
If your daughter, sister, mother or friend “identified” as a fat person trapped in a perilously emaciated body — if she truly believed she was obese, but, in reality, suffered from anorexia — would you affirm her “fatness” and get her liposuction, or would you go to the ends of the earth to help her bring her subjective (and mistaken) identity into alignment with objective reality? When someone is engaged in demonstrably self-destructive behavior, it is not loving, but hateful, to encourage persistence.
It was, ironically, lesbian activist and writer Dorothy Allison who once wrote, “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.” In validation of this truism, a series of new peer-reviewed studies have just been released that serve to utterly debunk and deconstruct key “progressive” homosexual-activist talking points.
Barber then includes a list of medical findings published by Johns Hopkins University parapsychologists that are destructive to individuals.
Then he shares a very personal and intimate part of his own life.
You think me callous. You think I hate. I’m not and I do not. Truth is hate to those who hate truth. I love self-identified “LGBT” individuals with a love beyond my own power to summon. I love them because Christ first loved me. I love them because, like them, I am a sinner in need of a Savior. They are under deception. The enemy of man is the father of lies, and he prowls like a lion seeking to both deceive and devour us all.
I know what it’s like to have someone close to me struggle with same-sex attraction and adopt an aberrant sexual identity. I have a dear family member wasting away with AIDS at this very moment. While I love him, I also understand that if I were to affirm his lifestyle and offer well-intentioned yet dangerously misguided “compassion,” I would be hurting him, not helping him.
I offer true compassion. I offer truth, in love.
If you truly love someone, you should never, ever encourage that person in a demonstrably destructive and subjective “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual” or “transgender” identity. Love them unconditionally, but encourage them to find freedom from it.
Because, whether spiritual, physical, or both, it may be the difference between life and death.
Most importantly, God condemns, rather than condones homosexuality. It causes upheaval to one's spiritual life. It's contrary to His plan for human sexuality. (Romans chapter one.)
Be Informed. Be Faithful. Be Prayerful.