Religious Liberty - God’s Good Creation

July 2, 2022July 1, 2022

Biden Admin’s War On “Conversion Therapy”

Important article by Kat Rosenfield on the distinction between yesterday’s Conversion Therapy and today’s definition. Verbal sands are shifting. Entire linguistic territories are being appropriated.

A few grab graphs:

Eight years after Time magazine declared that we are living through a transgender tipping point, there’s a growing sense of unease in the US, that we might have tipped too far, too fast. The momentum of the movement has given way to unanswered questions and nagging doubts: about the long-term side effects of using puberty blockers off-label, about the revelation that patients who begin to transition as children are likely to experience infertility or sexual dysfunction, about the testimony of regretful transitioners who say they were rushed by a gung-ho medical establishment into lives, and bodies, that they didn’t really want.

Unlike in Britain, stories like this, horrifying to the average person, do not appear to have breached the consciousness of the American government. The Biden White House has enthusiastically taken up the cause of not just ensuring access to medical transition for children who identify as trans, but taking other treatment options off the table. Last week, the White House announced that Biden will sign an executive order which takes specific aim at “so-called ‘conversion therapy’ — a discredited and dangerous practice that seeks to suppress or change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQI+ people”.

Critics have already noted the error in lumping in conversion therapy practices in relation to sexual orientation — which were ineffective at best and barbaric at worst — with the type of therapy that aims to help patients find a measure of peace with the bodies they have; such concerns have already led to the exclusion of transgender people from a government ban on conversion therapy in England and Wales. In the US, it is not yet clear whether a doctor with a patient who presented with gender dysphoria and an eating disorder, for instance, would be guilty of practising “conversion therapy” if he tried to address the patient’s mental health issues before opening the door to puberty blockers, hormones, and gender reassignment surgery.

It’s not the job of a doctor to affirm your identity

Full Article Here [Standard link disclaimer¹].

Relevant previous posts….

Philosopher Says Stop Linguistic Colonialism

I repeat what I said in an earlier post. Who is the Conversion Therapist?

Is it the one who is trying to help a person align their thoughts and feelings with the body they were given at birth or the professional who disregards the body and proposes irreversible radical surgeries combined with life-long hormone treatments in hopes of aligning the outer body with a patient’s inner desires?

Full post:

Who Is The Conversion Therapist?

What about Christian therapists or counselors? Will they be allowed to continue to practice in the U.S. with a state approved medical license? Will the Christian Worldview and its anthropology be respected by licensing associations?

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Drawing by T. Cheesman, May 1816
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
Courtesy of the British Museum

Love Refuses to Affirm Confusion

July 1, 2022July 1, 2022

Yeshiva U. Sued By LGBTQ+ Student Organization

Today I’m on the religious liberty/persecution beat.

The New York County Supreme Court has ruled that Yeshiva University in Manhattan must allow a LGBTQ student club on campus. The court cited the school’s status as “a non-religious organization.”

Yep. Sure did.

However a brief look at their web-site says otherwise.

Yeshiva is a private Modern Orthodox Jewish University. But, according to this court, because Yeshiva is a “place or provider of public accommodation” it has violated the New York City Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations in the city.

It must allow student clubs, organization on campus even if those clubs and organizations have views, beliefs, or practices that are diametrically opposed to Orthodox Jewish teaching.

“Any ruling that Yeshiva is not religious is obviously wrong,” said Hanan Eisenman, a university spokesman, in a statement. “As our name indicates, Yeshiva University was founded to instill Torah values in its students while providing a stellar education, allowing them to live with religious conviction as noble citizens and committed Jews.”

The court’s decision, he said, “violates the religious liberty upon which this country was founded” and “permits courts to interfere in the internal affairs of religious schools, hospitals and other charitable organizations.” (While many non-Orthodox Jewish congregations are supportive of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, Orthodox leaders tend to interpret the Torah as promoting more traditional ideas of gender and sexuality.)

Plaintiffs (Club) seek an order restraining the defendants (School) from continuing their refusal to officially recognize the YU Pride Alliance as a student organization because of the members sexual orientation or gender and/or YU Pride Alliance's status, mission, and/or activities on behalf of LGBTQ students.  Plaintiffs further seek an order granting YU Pride Alliance "the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of Yeshiva University, because of the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender of the YU Pride Alliance's members, and/or the YU Pride Alliance's status, mission and/or activities on behalf of LGBTQ students."  [emphasis added]

Source

Approximately 80% of its 6400 undergraduates live on campus. This ruling would allow members of YU Pride Alliance to live on campus with a status based on that member’s “perceived…gender.” Pride Alliance Members possessing anatomically ‘male members’ but who identify as female will be allowed to live in female dormitory space. Yeshiva would need to provide full and equal accommodations to any biologically male student who self-identifies as a female or woman.

Why? Judge Lynn Kotler asserted that Yeshiva’s educational purpose took precedence over its religious purpose.

“Yeshiva is a university which provides educational instruction, first and foremost. Yeshiva’s religious character evidenced by required religious studies, observation of Orthodox Jewish law, students’ participation in religious services, etc. are all secondary to Yeshiva’s primary purpose,” Kotler ruled.

Source:  New York County Clerk 06/24/2022

The school’s Religious Liberty constitutional claims were denied. The school is appealing.

A senior at Yeshiva, Natan Ehrenreich, writing in a June 20 National Review piece disputed Judge Kotler’s primary/secondary purpose argument:

It is immediately apparent from the moment one steps foot on campus that YU is a 'religious corporation.'  Pictures of rabbis are plastered on every wall and elevator door.  Study halls are filled with eager men and women who spend many hours each day probing the depths of the Bible and Talmud.  Walk into any YU building at around 8:00am and you'll find at least ten men gathered together to pray, donning their tefillin (ritual phylacteries) as God commanded.  These men are religious.  Their institution is religious.

Similar “place or provider of public accommodation” laws are changing around the country with “perceived gender” or “gender identity” language being added to these statutes.

Religious Liberty claims will be tested.

Religious Schools, Hospitals, Charitable Organizations, Churches. etc., in certain jurisdictions had better get their legal team together. Claims based on religious autonomy, the Free Exercise Clause, the Free Speech Clause and the Assembly Clause of the U.S. Constitution will be adjudicated.

This case probably ends up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

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June 29, 2022July 4, 2022

College Students Demand Protection From Words and Ideas

Thomas Jefferson once said:

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.  - Notes on the State of Virginia

Freedom of Religion was an uncomplicated matter. For Jefferson, tolerance of other worldviews would be wide ranging unless it damaged him financially or harmed him physically.

The times have changed. In today’s world the psychologized self reigns supreme such that if what you do or say hurts another person’s feelings then you have harmed them. This amounts to a form of oppression. The offender must therefore be silenced. No pockets need be picked. Nor legs broken.

Words and Ideas are enough to cause harm. Identities are thereby marginalized. And legitimacy denied.

Tolerance is passé. Affirmation or silence is required.

Obviously, in such a fragile world, freedom of religion and freedom of speech will be under threat.

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt were featured in a previous post.

Coddling Generation Safety Blankey? Or Affirming Shared Truths?

Their very fine book, The Coddling of the American Mind offers insight into today’s fragile student psyche. And how we got to this point in our culture.

They wrote a series of articles in The Atlantic which they eventually turned into that book.

Here are some quotes:

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

Source: The Atlantic

According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided.
Lukianoff & Haidt

Read the whole thing.

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As a Christian I certainly advocate avoiding offensive speech, if at all possible, without denying my worldview.

As a grandparent I bemoan the overall lack of resilience and grit in today’s younger generation.

What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection?
Lukianoff & Haidt

We’ve coddled too far. The weakest person in the room now dictates the discussion. And remains woefully unprepared for life in this world.

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