Posts Tagged ‘first amendment’

As Michigan’s “pronouns” bill advances, free speech is threatened

Posted: July 9, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“Most times you can’t hear ’em talk, other times you can
 All the same old clichés, is it woman, is it man?
 And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand.”
 Bob Seger, “Turn the Page.” 

Those lyrics, from legendary Michigan rocker Bob Seger, may turn out to be prescient, because the Michigan House of Representatives, which has a Democrat majority, passed a bill in June that, among other things, will impose a hefty fine or imprisonment, if a person maliciously refuses to use another person’s preferred pronoun. 

The bill, HB 4474, expands on a Michigan law that covers religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Newsweek noted that Dylan Mulvaney, a man who claims to be woman, said in a video a while back about people like me who misgender him, “I feel like that should be illegal, I don’t know. That’s just bad journalism.”

No, it’s not. Mulaney, an internet influencer who has done to Bud Light what Eric Idle’s S. Frog character did to Monty Python’s fictional Conquistador Coffee, is wrong, as he is on so many things, What I wrote in the previous paragraph is good journalism because it’s the truth. Sorry, wokesters, but men who “transition” into women do not have ovaries, do not have menstrual periods, and do not undergo menopause. Women who do the opposite do not have testicles, a prostate gland, or Y chromosomes. I could go on, but I don’t have to.

Some people need to simply follow the science. 

Except, maybe soon in Michigan, if its Senate passes HB 4474 and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signs it into law, following the science and speaking out about it might get someone like me fined or worse. 

In her Senate confirmation hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not–or in my opinion, would not–define what a woman is. But according to HealthyChildren.org, at around age two, toddlers know the difference between the two genders. Again, follow the science.

The headline of this blog post is colored red. How do I know? Because when I was at the age when I figured out what males and females are, my mother probably said something along these lines to me, “That color is red.” And that information was confirmed to me when I attended kindergarten.

Some things are that simple.

Well, it should be that simple. Transgendered people complain about being bullied. Well, bullying is wrong. I suppose Mulvaney considers it bullying when internet trolls visit his Instagram page and comments, “You’re a man.” Oh, a word for you trolls. Don’t you have anything better to do? Surely there is trash on a roadside near your home that needs to be collected.

On the flip side, in regard to gender, we are at a stage in America when someone says, “Dylan Mulvaney is a man” in mixed company–especially at work–it has to be spoken in whispered tones, sotto voce as the French say. 

Being labeled a transphobe–phobe, by the way means irrational fear–can get many people in trouble on the job. Or maybe soon in Michigan, getting fined or being imprisoned. And it’s not an irrational fear to lose out on a promotion or getting fired for being deemed a transphobe.

I call that bullying. 

As regular readers know, my wife was born in the Soviet Union, in Latvia. At school a number of decades ago, repeatedly, her teachers told her that Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, voluntarily joined the USSR in 1940. Of course, that was a lie. Her parents knew it–and so did every adult in the Baltic States at that time. Yes, that includes the teachers. But my wife didn’t discover what really happened in 1940, beginning with learning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, until she reached adulthood.

During my wife’s childhood, adults in the Soviet Union were afraid of the repercussions of telling the truth. So my wife’s parents never discussed the USSR seizing the Baltic States with her until Mikhael Gorbachev was the Soviet leader.

In the New York Sun, Dean Karayanis, reminded me that Soviet citizens faced prison if they were caught spilling coffee on a picture of Joseph Stalin. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the Gulag Archipelago, spent eight years in the Gulags for criticizing Stalin in private letters, even though he took the precaution of using a codename for the dictator.

American society isn’t at that more frightening point yet. But Michigan just took a baby step in that direction. 

Or maybe we are there. Remember that Seger song? “And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand.” Well, I’m making one. Is anyone else with me?

Fortunately, the new Michigan “pronouns” bill will almost certainly be challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. 

Which is another reason why I’m grateful for the 6-3 conservative majority on the US Supreme Court.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Biden Regime’s war on the Free Exercise of Religion accelerates

Posted: April 13, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Progressives, and other Leftists, have long detested all forms of Christianity.  This is because all ideologies of the political left are religions in themselves.  Unlike the different denominations of Christianity, the ideologies of the left are political religions. This makes them more akin to Islam.  Because progressivism is a political religion, it cannot exist peacefully with other religions.

Joe Biden, and those pulling his marionette strings, are all hardcore leftists.  Because of this they seek to banish all forms of Christianity from the public square.  Soon after being installed in the White House, the Biden regime began waging a war against the religions they detest.  The latest major battle in this war began at the beginning of Holy Week when, under the direction of the Biden Regime, Walter Reed National Military Medical center jettisoned Catholic Priests serving as chaplains.

In a move that has stunned Catholics and religious freedom advocates, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. issued a “cease and desist order” just before Holy Week to a community of Franciscan Catholic priests from Holy Name College that had been serving servicemembers and their families at the center for almost two decades.

On April 7, the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS) announced that Walter Reed issued the order on March 31, just as the most sacred week of the year for Christians was beginning. AMS noted that the contract for providing Catholic Pastoral Care was instead awarded to a secular defense contracting firm that does not have the capacity to offer Catholic pastoral services such as Mass and confession, which can only be administered by an ordained priest. AMS further pointed out that without the services of the Franciscan priests, there would be only one other Catholic priest assigned to Walter Reed, an Army chaplain who is currently “in the process of separating from the Army.”

This unprecedented move sparked outrage amongst the Catholic hierarchy.

Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy P. Broglio was perplexed by Walter Reed’s decision and expressed concern that it would infringe on the ability of Catholic servicemembers and their families to freely exercise their faith while at the center.

“It is incomprehensible that essential pastoral care is taken away from the sick and the aged when it was so readily available,” he said. “This is a classic case where the adage ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it’ applies. I fear that giving a contract to the lowest bidder overlooked the fact that the bidder cannot provide the necessary service. I earnestly hope that this disdain for the sick will be remedied at once and their First Amendment rights will be respected.”

The Archbishop is absolutely correct.  The Free Exercise of Religion clause of  the First Amendment guarantees all Americans the right to worship as they please.  Progressives claim that Establishment clause of the First Amendment created a separation of Church and state.  This is absolute fiction.  That clause only prevents the United States from declaring an official state religion.

AMS said that despite numerous appeals to Walter Reed by their general counsel Elizabeth A. Tomlin to reinstate the priests at least through Holy Week, they received no response from the medical center.

“Especially during Holy Week, the lack of adequate Catholic pastoral care causes untold and irreparable harm to Catholics who are hospitalized and therefore a captive population whose religious rights the government has a constitutional duty to provide for and protect,” 

This move is only the latest attack on the free exercise of religion.

Additionally, in September of last year, the administration issued a rule mandating that Veterans Affairs medical facilities carry out abortions as well as provide abortion counseling. When a Christian nurse practitioner requested a religious accommodation on two occasions from having to participate in abortions, she was denied. She is now filing suit against the hospital for placing a substantial burden on her sincerely held religious beliefs.

And here is one more from Louder With Crowder

The Weaponization of Government Committee obtained information from the FBI revealing the agency had sent undercover agents into Catholic churches to investigate them for domestic extremism. Yes, into churches. Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, “Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.”

This rather despicable episode also violates the Fourth Amendment. We do not live in a police state.  Actually that is not accurate anymore.  Progressives have now disgracefully turned the US into a police state.

The Biden Regime is once again trampling on the First Amendment

Posted: January 5, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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This is a topic I’ve covered far too often since Joe Biden was installed in the White House two years ago.  My defense is that I am only chronicling a long train of abuses committed by Joe Biden and his fellow progressives.  They have far too frequently obliterated the First Amendment protections guaranteed to each and every American.

The latest installment in this horror show of abuses is aimed at doctors and other members of the medical profession.  Joe Biden issued an executive order forcing all members of the medical profession to perform abortions, sterilizations, and sex change operations, even if these operations violate the religious beliefs of the medical workers

The Biden administration will withdraw a Trump administration rule that would have allowed any healthcare worker to refuse to participate in abortions, sterilizations, or sex-change operations for reasons of conscience.

Healthcare workers will still be allowed to opt out of abortions and sterilizations unless doing so would cause “undue hardship to their employer, ” the San Francisco Chronicle notes, under an existing 1973 federal law.

And a recent judicial order barring a Biden administration mandate on transgender surgeries in a Catholic hospital remains in effect (even though the judge confined the effect of the ruling to the parties in the case).

However, they would not be able to opt out at will, and might not be able to apply that law to so-called “gender-affirming care,” the administration’s euphemism for surgery or drugs that mimic opposite sex characteristics and that fall short of formal sterilization (such as the removal of breasts as a treatment of gender dysphoria).

The federal government forcing anyone to violate their religious beliefs is a direct violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.  The original 1973 law, which is now back in effect thanks to Biden’s executive order, did not go far enough because there is no “undue hardship” exception to the First Amendment.

As you can see from this next quote, President Trump understood the First Amendment far better than progressives because his rule was instep with the original understanding of the Free Exercise od Religion Clause.

The Trump-era rule, as described in 2018 in the Federal Register, aimed ” to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal conscience and anti-discrimination laws” within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): “The final rule also encourages the recipients of HHS funds to provide notice to individuals and entities about their right to be free from coercion or discrimination on account of religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The right of conscience is absolutely integral the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.  That is not just my opinion. It is a well-established fact, as you can see from this quote from the transcript of the debates in the House of Representatives when the Amendments to the Constitution that became the Bill of Rights were debated.  The designation for that particular session is 5, 17 , 20 Aug. 1789Annals 1:729–31, 755, 76

Mr. [Daniel] Carroll.–As the rights of conscience are, in their nature, of peculiar delicacy, and will little bear the gentlest touch of governmental hand; and as many sects have concurred in opinion that they are not well secured under the present constitution, he said he was much in favor of adopting the words. He thought it would tend more towards conciliating the minds of the people to the Government than almost any other amendment he had heard proposed. He would not contend with gentlemen about the phraseology, his object was to secure the substance in such a manner as to satisfy the wishes of the honest part of the community.

Mr. Madison said, he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience. Whether the words are necessary or not, he did not mean to say, but they had been required by some of the State Conventions, who seemed to entertain an opinion that under the clause of the Constitution, which gave power to Congress to make all laws necessary and proper to carry into execution the Constitution, and the laws made under it, enabled them to make laws of such a nature as might infringe the rights of conscience and establish a national religion; to prevent these effects he presumed the amendment was intended, and he thought it as well expressed as the nature of the language would admit.

The Progressive war on the Holiday that Must Not Be Named continues unabated

Posted: December 22, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Here in the People’s Republic of Marxachusetts, the name of one of the two most sacred Christian holidays is treated very much like one of the most vile curse words imaginable.  Few dare utter it in public even though a significant majority of us celebrate Christmas enthusiastically.  I know the same holds true for wherever progressives make up more than a token minority of the population,  They are very good at bullying people into compliance with their demands.

It is most depressing to see town after town in my part of the world hold Holiday Tree Lighting ceremonies and Holiday Bazaars.  Not a single one of the couple dozen towns I’ve seen listings for on social media mention Christmas. 

Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s my town was lavishly decorated for Christmas. This included an elaborate Nativity Scene right on the Town Hall grounds.   The Nativity Scene disappeared decades ago to appease progressive bullies who claimed it violated the “separation of church and state.” 

Nowhere in the Constitution is the phrase separation of church and state.  Some claim that it is part of the Establishment Clause.  This is false because the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment only prevents the federal government from declaring an official religion for the United States.  This clause does not reach down to the state or local level.

Progressives turn a blind eye to the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment, along with similar clauses in all state constitutions.  I know the Massachusetts Constitution contains more than one clause protecting the free exercise of religion.

The war on Christmas is fought most fervently in schools.  In a great many school districts Christmas parties are verboten.  Candy canes and Christmas colored napkins are banned.  On the website for my local school district, the students will have the next week off for “Holiday Break.”  Christmas is not listed at all, however, New Year’s Day is listed.   

Christmas is treated like a vile swear word because progressives claim naming it will offend some nameless individuals.  That is claptrap.  Only whiny progressives are offended.  It is utterly shameful that we have catered to these wretched bullies.

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