Some terms have become heavily politicized. One of these terms is ‘transgender’, which while it can mean many things, all point to the same concept, which is the philosophical, moral, and biological error that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man. One does not become a woman by chopping off one’s member, drilling a hole between one’s legs, and putting on a dress as much as a woman does not become a man by sewing her natural openings shut and gluing a tube where said opening used to be. This is not ‘progressive’ or ‘intelligent’, but a modern and currently a socially acceptable form of genital mutilation. However, because of how it is viewed in society, those who oppose it are often attacked and told that they are the ones causing a problem, and not those who hold to these disturbed views, and have been known to take such people to court.
However, a story from the Christian Post reports in a favorable development that a Catholic Hospital cannot be forced to perform such genital-mutilating surgery as it violates Catholic teaching and their right to freedom of religion.
A federal court in North Dakota has ruled that a group of Catholic hospitals and others should not be required by the Department of Health and Human Services to perform gender transition procedures, including those for minors.
U.S. District Court Judge Peter Welte in North Dakota issued a ruling Tuesday in the case of Sisters of Mercy, et al. v. Azar.
Welte, appointed to the federal judiciary by President Donald Trump in 2019, granted permanent injunctive relief to the plaintiffs and concluded that they are exempted from an HHS rule known as the “Transgender Mandate.” He cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“The Catholic Plaintiffs have demonstrated an entitlement to permanent injunctive relief. An RFRA violation is comparable to the deprivation of a First Amendment right,” wrote Welte.
“Having weighed the pertinent factors, the Court will permanently enjoin the Defendants from enforcing the successfully challenged interpretations of federal law against the Catholic Plaintiffs.”
The decision prevents HHS from “implementing regulations thereto against the Catholic Plaintiffs in a manner that would require them to perform or provide insurance coverage for gender-transition procedures, including by denying federal financial assistance because of their failure to perform or provide insurance coverage for such procedures or by otherwise pursuing, charging, or assessing any penalties, fines, assessments, investigations, or other enforcement actions.”
In 2016, the Obama administration implemented a new regulation through the Affordable Care Act commonly known as the “Transgender Mandate.”
The regulation required that healthcare providers perform gender transition procedures, even on minors, even if they hold religious objections to the controversial practice.
In response, a group of Catholic entities filed a lawsuit against HHS over the regulation. Those groups include an order called the Sisters of Mercy, two Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center clinics; SMP Health System and the North Dakota-based University of Mary. (source)
However, one should not look at this as the end. Rather, this is just the beginning.
Remember, the trend that we have identified is that so far, the long-term support of such actions is going to continue because the people support it. While rulings such as this are good, they are not proof that the trend itself has changed or is going to. Rather, it is a possibility that it may be challenged by the Supreme Court, if not this case than another, and may reverse any progress in stopping this behavior that was made. With Biden in office and a Congress fully in control of the Democrat party, who makes no attempts to hide their support of such things, and with Biden promising to advance the LGBT agenda publicly, what for them may represent a small legal setback does not stop the larger trend.