WND EXCLUSIVE
ANOTHER STATE ISSUES TRANSGENDER RULES FOR CHURCHES
Open restrooms, censoring members' comments, massive liabilities all on the table
Bob Unruh
President Obama’s transgender agenda has taken huge leaps forward in the last year or so. There have been orders for public building managers, for colleges and even for public schools to allow a male who says he’s female to use locker rooms and restrooms set aside for women.
The privacy and feelings of the biological females who are in those facilities are of no account.
Now a second state has decided that churches, too, are bound by the agenda.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination this month released a “Gender Identity Guidance” that imposes its demands on society.
“The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination enforces [state law on discrimination]. The MCAD developed this guidance to educate the public about discrimination based on gender identity, to describe what evidence may be submitted to support a claim of gender identity discrimination, to inform individuals of their rights, and to assist employers, providers of housing, mortgage services, and owners, managers and agents of places of public accommodation in understanding their obligations.”
The conflict arises under the instructions for “places of public accommodation.”
“Under [the law] places of public accommodation may not discriminate against, or restrict a person from services because of that person’s gender identity. For example, a hotel or motel may not refuse to book a room for a person because of the person’s gender identity,” the state threatens.
It continues, “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”
The demands include having church officials, and even members, use whatever pronouns a person would demand, irrespective of their actual gender.
At the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, a commentary pointed out that “churches hold events ‘open to the general public’ all the time – it’s often how they seek new converts.”
“And even church ‘secular events,’ which I take it means events that don’t involve overt worship, are generally viewed by the church as part of its ministry, and certainly as a means of the church modeling what it believes to be religiously sound behavior.”
Eugene Volokh’s commentary continued: “My guess is that most churches would not turn someone away from a generally open spaghetti supper. … But some religious leaders, as well as the church employees and volunteers, may refuse to use pronouns that they believe are inconsistent with God’s plan as revealed by anatomy.”
“Under Massachusetts law, refusing to use a transgender person’s preferred pronoun would be punishable discrimination. (At least this is true of ‘he’ or ‘she’ – I saw nothing in the document about ‘ze’ and other newly made-up pronouns.) The Massachusetts document … makes that clear in the employment context, and it also makes clear that the antidiscrimination law rules apply to places of public accommodations (including churches, in ‘secular events’ ‘open to the public’) just as much as to employment.”
Volokh warned: “Indeed, a church might be liable even for statements by its congregants (and not just its volunteers, who are acting as agents) that are critical of transgender people. Tolerating such remarks is generally seen as allowing a ‘hostile environment,’ and therefore ‘harassment.’ Indeed, the statement … specifically encourages people to ‘prohibit derogatory comments or jokes about transgender persons from employees, clients, vendors and any others, and promptly investigate and discipline persons who engage in discriminatory conduct’.”
WND previously has reported on the issue in Iowa.
There, a church sued the state in federal court, demanding that officials withdraw their threats of prosecution because of the content of the church’s sermons, specifically what is said about homosexuality, same-sex “marriage,” transgenderism and other related topics.
That case erupted when the state’s Civil Rights Commission first claimed the authority to control the content of sermons and then to define what’s religious.
At issue is the state’s nondiscrimination requirements that specify any “public accommodation” can be ordered not to say anything that might make a homosexual or a transgender feel “unwelcome,” such as even reading from the Bible a condemnation of such behavior.
Lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom, who are representing the church, have filed a reply in support of their motion for a preliminary injunction that would protect the church members’ constitutional rights while the case plays out.
Without that order, they contend the speech of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ and its pastors and members is being unconstitutionally limited.
The state commission declined several times to respond to a WND request for comment.
Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel for ADF, said the issue is about the basics of the Constitution.
“Churches should be free to communicate their religious beliefs and operate their houses of worship according to their faith without fearing government punishment. It’s not good enough for government officials to say we should simply trust them to tell us what is religious and what isn’t. The law must be clear, and at present, the only thing that’s clear is that the law gives too much power to government bureaucrats who don’t even seem to understand the most basic constitutional principles,” she said.
ADF Senior Counsel Steven O’Ban said that in the meantime, the court “should issue an injunction that makes certain that this law won’t be enforced against our client while this lawsuit proceeds.”
“Neither the commission nor any state law has the constitutional authority to dictate how a church uses its facility or what public statements a church can make concerning human sexuality,” he said.
The Iowa Civil Rights Act bans places of “public accommodation” from expressing their views on human sexuality if they would “directly or indirectly” make “persons of any particular … gender identity” feel “unwelcome.”
The state claims churches are a “public accommodation.”
But the state’s interpretation could be used by bureaucrats to bar churches from making “unwelcome” public comments during an activity the commission deems not to have a “bona fide religious purpose.”
The state commission also claims the state law demands that people be given access to church restrooms and locker rooms according to “gender identity.”
The new brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa said the commission’s “overreach is entirely predictable in light of Iowa’s constitutionally flawed definition of public accommodation, which clearly encompasses churches. The commission has twice tried to inform ‘churches’ and then ‘places of worship’ what activities will bring them under the act. But in doing so, the commission only highlights how the act interferes into the internal affairs of houses of worship, and why a preliminary injunction is absolutely necessary to protect the church from further chill of its constitutional rights.”
See a video about the Iowa case:
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/another-state-issues-transgender-rules-for-churches/#OtkjTRGosltIibTp.99My comments: The Degenerate State of Massachusetts Defies God Almighty in its Attack on Churches. They, like Obama, are attempting to IMPOSE their godless, Socialist, Secular Humanist RELIGION on Christian Churches. In doing so they bring a CURSE on themselves.
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