Last month, four Massachusetts churches pulled their lawsuit against the state after they received religious exemptions from its transgender law.
“The government can’t encroach on the internal, religious practices of a church. The language revisions that our lawsuit prompted should ensure that doesn’t happen,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Steve O’Ban stated after the lawsuit was withdrawn.
“The comments of commonwealth officials gave these churches reason for great concern, and so we are pleased wording changes have been made to respect the constitutionally protected freedoms these congregations and pastors have,” he added.
In July, Massachusetts added “gender identity” to its list of classes protected against discrimination.
Then, the state’s attorney general and its anti-discrimination commission interpreted the law to say that everyone had to have access to facilities like bathrooms based upon the gender they presently identify with, and not upon their birth gender.
Church facilities that held any non-religious events like spaghetti dinners would be considered public accommodations and would have to comply, they said, despite their religious beliefs.
Churches also could have faced action by the government if their Pastors preached religious views on sexuality that opposed the gender identity anti-discrimination protection, Alliance Defending Freedom noted. Those not complying with the law could have been punished with $50,000 fines and up to a year in jail.
Four Christian churches challenged the action in a district court, in October. They said the state legislature and anti-discrimination commission “failed to provide an exemption for religious institutions” and did not clearly define the standard they would use to determine if a church would be exempt from the law – “other than the woefully inadequate and confusing ‘spaghetti supper’ test.”
Rather, the commission said they would judge religious exemptions “on a case-by-case-basis,” ADF claimed in its complaint, adding that thus, “a Pastor, other church leader, or a court must guess as to which of the church’s activities subject it to the severe sanctions of the Act.”
“All events held at a church on its property have a religious purpose, and the government has no authority to violate the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of religion and speech,” Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, stated.
Then in a November 7th letter, the state announced that it had changed its guidance on the rule and would not be including “houses of worship” among the “public accommodations” that would be subject to the law.
“Your lawsuit caused us to focus on these issues and to make this revision to our website. Thank you for bringing the issue to our attention,” the state attorney general’s office said in the letter to ADF.
“No church should fear government punishment simply for serving its community consistently with its faith,” Holcomb stated. “Massachusetts officials made the right decision to respect these churches’ freedom of religion and speech.”
Well, it appears that at least a tiny vestige of sanity remains in Massachusetts.
Gender identity is unadulterated boulder-dash! It is nothing other than cover-up for a deviant sexual disorder which politically active psychologists and psychiatrists (oftentimes themselves mentally disordered) have tried to pawn off on society at-large. as a genetic predisposition as normal as heterosexuality.
It should be obvious to anyone with any sense of intelligence and discretion that psychologists and psychiatrists are not practitioners of medical science but witch doctors who deal with myths, often treating their gullible patients by prescribing powerful mood altering medications with the reckless abandon of the worst drug pushers in our inner cities.
Let us remember who it was that told Bishops that Priest pedophiles, who had undergone psychological treatment programs (very expensive programs, I might add), could return to active ministry under their continuing supervision.
These misguided ministers of deception were never held accountable for their malpractice and incompetency, though the Bishops should have exposed their malfeasance for what it truly was.
For far too long, society has allowed these shamans to have a respected place in medicine that they simply do not deserve.
Finally, albeit much too slowly for me, some truly enlightened and brave souls are beginning to push back against this drivel.
The culture war continues, but what is encouraging is that those on the side of sanity have been given hope that, if they are committed and willing, they can turn back the tide of misguided and harmful social engineering and allow real science and commonsense to rule the day once again.
Three cheers to Alliance Defending Freedom and to its senior counsel, Steve O’Ban! Keep up the good work!
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