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Attending a Church Dinner in Massachusetts? Watch Thy Pronouns

Sept. 12 2016

At the beginning of this month, a Massachusetts commission issued its official “Gender Identity Guidance.” The document, which explains state regulations prohibiting sex-based “discrimination,” notes that the laws apply to public accommodations—and that “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.” Eugene Volokh comments:

Now, 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 to mean events that don’t involve overt worship, are generally viewed by a church as part of its ministry, and certainly as a means for a church to model what it believes to be religiously sound behavior.

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. . . . 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.” . . .

[In other words], once they open their doors for “secular events,” church leaders have to use the words that the law requires, even when they view them as false or even blasphemous, and have to suppress offensive speech by their congregants.

Read more at Washington Post

More about: American law, Discrimination, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Religion, Religion & Holidays

 

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic