Columnist.
All across America, parents, teachers and local school districts have been having conversations about how best to accommodate the privacy and safety concerns of transgender students while also addressing the privacy and safety concerns of other students. Solutions were found, such as the creation of new single-occupancy restrooms and changing facilities for transgender students while retaining girls' and boys' rooms for biological girls and boys.
Liberals, stop being so defensive. That's the message of Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet in a new post at Balkinization, titled "Abandoning Defensive Crouch Liberal Constitutionalism." The problem, according to Tushnet, is that liberals have been *too defensive* when it comes to advancing their agenda in the courts.
"[W]hether we agree or disagree with Schilling's message or ESPN's isn't the point."
ESPN has fired Curt Schilling. The company said that his speech went against company values because ESPN is "an inclusive company." What's at stake here? Curt Schilling has a right to say biological men don't belong in women's bathrooms in whatever controversial way he wants. And ESPN has a right to give Caitlyn Jenner the "Arthur Ashe Courage Award" for being a men's sports icon who now publicly identifies as a woman. And whether we agree or disagree with Schilling's message or ESPN's isn't the point.
On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit Court ruled against a Virginia school district that sought to accommodate a transgender student while also protecting the privacy rights of other students. The court concluded that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex — should be interpreted as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as a Department of Education letter suggested in 2015. The ruling allows a lawsuit brought by a transgender student to proceed.
If it wasn't for double standards, some liberals would have none at all. That seems to be the lesson from the past few weeks, where liberals have displayed three distinct forms of hypocrisy. Liberal governors and mayors signed travel bans to North Carolina and Mississippi, CEOs of major corporations pledged boycotts and relocations, and Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams have canceled scheduled concerts in those states.
Easter Monday didn't bring good news to citizens in the peach state. Instead, corporate bullying killed a religious liberty bill. Big business and special interests successfully pressured Gov. Deal to veto legislation offering common-sense solutions to the challenges of a changing culture. It's not unique to Georgia. And it's bad news for all Americans.
This morning, the Mississippi House passed a bill, HB 1523, protecting religious freedom. If the House disposes of a procedural maneuver that has delayed a final vote until Monday, the bill will go to the governor's desk for his signature, as the Senate passed the bill earlier this week. The bill is good policy and the governor should sign it.
Big business has stomped into another state, trying to impose the values of the cultural left. This time, a governor who dared to stand up for responsible policy is being targeted by big business' bullying over bathrooms. At issue is H.B. 2, a bill North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law last week after it passed the House 83-25 and the Senate 32-0. The bill accomplishes two main objectives. First, it says that private schools, restaurants, stores, and businesses are free to establish whatever bathroom policies they'd like, but that access to government bathrooms will be determined primarily by biological sex.
Georgia's Republican Governor Nathan Deal has caved to pressure from big business and special interests and vetoed a very modest religious liberty bill. This shows the lack of courage of many in the political class, and it also highlights the extreme nature of the left and the business community. To these groups, even mild religious liberty protections are unacceptable.
On Wednesday night, the Georgia legislature introduced new language to its religious freedom bill and passed the bill in mere hours. Haste makes waste. This new language significantly waters down a religious freedom bill that had real force even though it was, as we pointed out three weeks ago, already lacking in certain respects. The new version of the bill provides Religious Freedom Restoration Act levels of protection for certain protected persons, but it explicitly says these protections cannot apply in cases of "invidious discrimination." Of course, no one is in favor of invidious discrimination, but the problem is that in the hands of a liberal judge, *everything* looks like invidious discrimination even when it is not, such as religious universities or adoption agencies that want their policies to reflect their teachings on marriage. This apes the bad "fix" that gutted the Indiana religious freedom bill.
Physician-assisted suicide is often portrayed as a compassionate option for clear-thinking adults to end their lives peacefully. But the reality is much darker. Letting doctors prescribe deadly drugs can actually encourage acts of violence, often resulting from subtle social and psychological coercion. Physician-assisted suicide fundamentally changes the doctor-patient relationship, how medicine is practiced, and how society views the poor, elderly or disabled. This is why it's so disconcerting that so many states are considering allowing physician-assisted suicide. Assisted suicide denies the equal worth and dignity of every human life.
South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, officially has no problem with boys in girls' locker rooms. There's no other way to say it. Special interests and big businesses effectively lobbied the governor to veto a good bill because of the threats they made. Welcome to cultural cronyism at the bathroom.
Last Friday, the Georgia Senate passed a good bill that protects religious freedom in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's redefinition of marriage. And already special interest groups and big businesses are trying to pressure the governor into refusing to sign the bill unless it is significantly watered down in the House. This is yet another example of cultural cronyism. Businesses in Georgia were always free to embrace gay marriage — to bake wedding cakes for gay marriages and make floral arrangements for same-sex nuptials — and many do, but now they want the government to force *everyone* in Georgia to do the same.
Love is in the air this Valentine's Day. But that doesn't mean that marriage and family are flourishing. A mistaken understanding of romantic love — the Hallmark and Hollywood version — has, unfortunately, undermined key aspects of committed marital love, and the consequences have been dire. Fifty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued his famous report on the black family. He pointed out that births to single mothers in the general population were in single digits but in the black community were approaching 25 percent. Today, 40 percent of all Americans, 50 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of African Americans are born to single moms. These children have done nothing wrong and, frequently, these mothers have done nothing wrong — they're often the only ones to take responsibility and care for the kids — but something has gone wrong. And these children, women, and entire communities suffer as a result.
You've heard about the Obamacare Individual Mandate. That's the one that requires every person in America to get government-approved health insurance or face significant IRS penalties. You've heard about the Health and Human Services (HHS) contraception mandate. That's the one that requires private employers, including religious institutions like the Little Sisters of the Poor, to help provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs or face millions in IRS fines.
New proposed regulations from the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services would create serious conflicts of conscience for many organizations, hospitals, physicians, and other individuals involved in health care. The proposed regulations create special privileges based on gender identity that would lead to unreasonable and costly litigation for physicians, hospitals, insurers, and others involved in health care. They effectively would require controversial procedures, such as "sex-reassignment" surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions. Every individual should be treated with dignity and respect, especially when he or she is in need of medical care. However, the proposed regulations would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, threaten freedom of conscience, and advance bad public policy.
America is dedicated to protecting the freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution, while respecting citizens' equality before the law. None of these freedoms is absolute. Compelling governmental interests can at times trump fundamental civil liberties, but sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws do not pass this test. Rather, they trample First Amendment rights and unnecessarily impinge on citizens' right to run their local schools, charities, and businesses in ways consistent with their values. SOGI laws do not protect equality before the law; instead, they grant special privileges that are enforceable against private actors.
In June 2015, the Supreme Court redefined marriage throughout America by mandating governmental entities to treat same-sex relationships as marriages. The Court, however, did not say that private schools, charities, businesses, or individuals must do so if they disagree. Indeed, there is no justification for the government to force these entities to violate beliefs about marriage that, as Justice Kennedy noted, are held "in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world." Americans who believe that marriage is the union of husband and wife should continue to be free to live and work according to their convictions.
"Conservatives can win when they refuse to be bullied by elites into silence."
