The Christian Post, by Ian M. Giatti: A faith-based nonprofit group is warning Christians to keep an eye on a high-profile case before the United States Supreme Court that could have long-term implications for religious liberty.
Last week, the nation’s highest court heard oral arguments on Tennessee’s ban on sex-change procedures for minors, including the prescribing of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries, such as castration. Opponents argue that such bans deprive minors of necessary medical care, while supporters insist that the laws protect children from making irreversible and harmful decisions.
The case involves whether Tennessee’s law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, requiring that people in similar circumstances be treated the same under the law. Both sides in the case have argued they are acting to protect minors from harm.
While a ruling in the case won’t be released until next year, The Associated Press reports the conservative-majority court appeared poised to uphold Tennessee’s law even as many justices raised concerns about the involvement of the judiciary in regulating medical procedures. Trey Dellinger, senior legal fellow at the American Family Association, warned that the outcome of the decision could have long-lasting implications for religious liberty.
Dellinger suggested that a ruling against the Tennessee law could set a precedent that clashes with Christian values. “There is an unavoidable conflict between the Christian faith and the radical trans agenda,” Dellinger explained. “Trans identity politics is just the latest manifestation of the age-old tendency to make an idol of one’s own desires, to set oneself up as one’s own god.”
“The inevitability of that conflict means that Christians should be tuned in to what the Court does here,” he added.
He suggested that constitutionalizing transgenderism could have severe consequences for religious freedoms, particularly in situations like custody disputes where a Christian parent might face challenges when their child’s gender identity conflicts with their faith.
Dellinger warned about seeing cases similar to that of Texas father Jeff Younger, who has found himself in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife as a result of her efforts to get one of their twin sons to identify as a girl.
“Imagine a Christian husband and wife have a child, the husband is unfaithful, and they divorce. Then the husband ‘transitions’ to a female identity and seeks custody of the child,” he said. “The wife, knowing her child would be raised in an environment hostile to her Christian faith, opposes granting custody to the transitioning husband. Would giving gender transition constitutionally protected status require a family court judge to ignore the transition in the custody dispute?”
“That is just one of many troubling questions for Christians that could arise from constitutionalizing trans rights in this case,” he contended.
Dellinger also took issue with the analysis made by the three progressive justices during oral arguments. At one point, Justice Sonia Sotomayor equated body-mutilating trans surgeries with the risk of taking over-the-counter medication.
“Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin,” she was quoted as saying Wednesday.
Dellinger condemned Sotomayor’s remarks, calling it “a strained comparison” that undermines the court’s responsibility to neutrally apply the U.S. Constitution.
“The risks of taking aspirin are not comparable to taking hormones that permanently cause infertility and destroy a child’s normal, healthy, physical and mental development,” Dellinger told CP.
He also criticized Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for her remarks in which she compared the Tennessee law to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage that was struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia.
“In Loving, those same kinds of scientific arguments were made,” Brown said, explaining that in that case, Virginia had maintained that when “the scientific evidence is substantially in doubt,” the Supreme Court “should defer to the wisdom of the state legislature.”
Dellinger called Jackson’s comments “disappointing,” adding, “A child’s confusion about their sex is not remotely comparable to race.”
“Race is a fixed characteristic. A person can’t change their race by changing their mind,” he added. “But as everyone admitted in the oral arguments on Wednesday, children do change their minds and wish they had not transitioned. That is a key reason those experiencing gender confusion should not be recognized by the court as a suspect class like race because it is not a fixed or ‘immutable’ characteristic.”
Our Comment:
The “men of the city” are trying to surround the legal house of Lot.
Prophetic Link:
“But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter.” Genesis 19:4.
Comments
William Stroud
Saturday December 21st, 2024 at 01:38 AMSo much to comment on in this article but I’ll keep it brief as much as possible. I can’t believe an issue like this has even come up before the Supreme Court. Logic, reason and common sense seems to have completely vanished from our society. So-called “trans” ideology is when a person “believes” they are a different gender than the one identified by doctors at birth, literally, male or female followed by the “belief” that one may achieve a complete “transition” from one gender to the other through surgical procedures that alter healthy normal body parts and by ingesting pharmaceuticals such as hormones dominant in the desired gender and chemicals that “block” puberty. No amount of surgery and/or drugs can accomplish this “transition” in reality. It is cosmetic at best…or worst depending on how you look at it. This is the “belief” of the “trans” ideology. A belief happens in the mind. That is where the issue lies and this is what needs treatment, not the genitalia or hormones. The supreme court thinks the decision of a minor should enable them to make these life changing decisions. That’s absurd and dangerous. People who present this ideology to children are inhuman and should be kept away from innocent vulnerable kids. Help the kids. Get them counselling, Talk to them. Reason with them. God says “Come, let us reason together”. The children they say they want to protect are in need of psychological care, not surgical. To treat this condition with surgery is akin to performing lobotomies on the mentally ill. Perhaps this ideology is put forth by transhumanists in order to advance the progress of their notion of “live forever”. What person in their right mind believes a male can become a female in reality. You may look female, act female and sound female but the fact that you are still male is unchangeable by anyone except God, and I don’t know of Him ever doing such a thing. If a “Christian” couple marry, they enter into a contract to love each other and live as a couple and one decides to be unfaithful, to divorce and to change their gender presentation, they have violated that contract. In business if you violate a legal contract, which is what marriage is, you lose your rights. This all is a sign that Jesus will be coming soon. We all need to tell His truth to everyone who will listen.