Donald Trump rightfully gets credit for appointing the justices that overturned Roe v Wade, but that is the most reliable they have been. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett have been inconsistent in their voting record on key issues. Last week, they declined to hear a case involving split appellate decisions on Change Therapy bans.
The 9th Circuit Court ruled that Washington’s law which mandates affirmation of transgenderism and homosexuality whereas the 11th Circuit held that these laws are a violation of the free speech of health providers. Yet only Clearance Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented wanting to take on the case. Brett Kavanaugh is widely perceived as the most liberal Trump-appointed Justice, but that honor falls on Amy Coney Barrett. Daniel Horowitz notes in his column:
Under Washington’s SB 5722, passed and signed into law in 2018, licensed health care providers are barred from “[p]erforming conversion therapy on a patient under age eighteen.” Violators face a $5,000 fine, “remedial education,” suspension from practice, and license revocation.
In a world contorted beyond belief, it is a crime in Washington to counsel a boy that he is indeed a boy if he is struggling with the latest fad, but it is not considered abuse to convince a boy he is really a girl.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of the appeal. “It is beyond dispute that these laws restrict speech, and all restrictions on speech merit careful scrutiny,” Alito wrote.
Barrett and Kavanaugh are both uber-Catholics, but here it shows only with Kavanaugh. Neil Gorsuch is an Episcopalian, so this is unsurprising.
“There is little question that SB 5722 regulates speech and therefore implicates the First Amendment,” Thomas wrote in a separate dissenting opinion. “Under SB 5722, licensed counselors can speak with minors about gender dysphoria, but only if they convey the state-approved message of encouraging minors to explore their gender identities.”
For Thomas, Washington’s law is “viewpoint-based and content-based discrimination in its purest form” and therefore “presumptively unconstitutional.” “Expressing any other message is forbidden — even if the counselor’s clients ask for help to accept their biological sex.” How is that not a direct shot at freedom of speech?
Thomas lambasted the Ninth Circuit for sidestepping the First Amendment by hiding behind a phantom precedent of health care regulations of speech. “This case is not the first instance of the Ninth Circuit restricting medical professionals’ First Amendment rights,” he wrote, “and without the Court’s review, I doubt it will be the last.”
The liberals in this country are devoted to sexually grooming children, and yet half of the Republican-appointed Justices see no issue with this. It’s a major issue that Donald Trump failed to appoint the best or second-best Justice on the Supreme Court, and we will feel it even more when Thomas and Alito are gone.
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Not surprising considering Trump himself is pro-porneia, supporting and endorsing both homosexuality and transvestism. Many of us voted for him knowing that is the case because his personal opinion was at odds with the republican party platform, and we knew he couldn’t do anything to impose it. Such is now no longer the case. Since the 2020 election official endorsement and support of homosexuality and transvestism has been made part of the party platform.
Looking back now, I realize that he did work to impose it, hiring and platforming many of them, pressuring countries such as Uganda, and has played a key role in moving the republican party to the pro-porneia platform. And I regret having voted for him. I’ve committed from now on to only vote for individuals I am reasonably assured are solid Christians, who I can vote for in good conscience, and if none are on the ballot then I will not vote at all.
That aside though, in my opinion it is worse than regulation of speech. It is imposition of certain belief. It is establishment of religion. And the fact that the state encourages young people to become such abominable sinners, while outlawing any counseling otherwise, exposes the fact that there is no concrete basis for imposition of said belief. In this case, the baseless belief that abominable sin is more or less just a genetic trait like skin color. They know they’re imposing belief. They know they’re establishing religion. And they know it is entirely baseless and without merit. Which is why they work to outlaw anything and everything that counters and challenges that established belief.
Some of us understand this, and understand that the state can’t do anything but establish belief, because belief underlies it all. Somewhere under every law is a belief holding it up. This is where the Christian nationalists and federalists tend to have it right, and those who believe our existent framework, which is nothing like it was originally intended by the founders, is the best thing humanly possible have it very wrong. We already have religious nationalism – just a different religion.
I’m fairly certain Thomas and Alito know and understand this also, they just can’t say it publicly. They’ve got to hold up the illusion that the framework as it currently exists is workable – the illusion that it’s possible for a big government that has its tentacles in every aspect of our lives to not impose any belief, to not establish any religion, at all. The government shouldn’t even be licensing counselors. Counseling shouldn’t require a government license, or the government’s permission, in the first place. What right does the government have to say that any counseling is good or bad, or that anything or any behavior is right or wrong, based solely on belief? In our current framework, no right at all. Enter “compelling interest of the state … “, and now we’ve got a who new can of worms. The determining factor of the beliefs that will or will not be imposed is to be whether or not it is beneficial to the government? If that’s the case, we’re little more than livestock. I’m not sure it could possibly be any more opposite what this country was originally founded to be.
As I said in my prior post, the founders of this country were way ahead of us. They knew and understood this. From the very core of the law, the most fundamental rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness being endowed by our Creator, underlying every law and every ethic is belief. Underlying every ethic and every law is a moral. And that is why as the Constitution was first implemented, it forbade the federal government from establishing religion, but not the states and not local governments. They knew that it should not only be allowed, but that it was necessary and unavoidable. But since that framework has now been destroyed, it has been replaced with the imposition of false religion and different beliefs. What has resulted, what we have now, is something more akin to Pagan Nationalism.
But the case in question is worse than a matter of regulation of speech. It’s a matter of establishment of religion.
Federal judges can’t very well render public opinions for or against by stating that our current framework is an unworkable total mess, even though it may be true.
Having more federalist opinions myself, I can see how a federalist would say ok, well if Washington wan’t to encourage conversion to abominable sin and outlaw conversion from, then another state can do the opposite. If Washington wants to be a pagan state, another state can be a Christian state. And that’s why some may have avoided taking up the case. It could be that they’re trying to protect states rights, and not make a blanket ruling on the federal level that would apply to the entire country.
But I also understand that’s extreme wishful thinking that denies present reality. The federalist framework as originally established would be far better than the mess we have now, but at the same time we’re stuck with what we have, and have to work with what we have. At this point it’s as far out of reach as Christian Nationalism. So the judges should’ve taken up the case, held their feet to the fire, and set a precedent at the federal level that says the state cannot impose beliefs for or against, particularly considering that much of those pro-porneia beliefs are being imposed by the federal government.