On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the major cases of the term. USA vs. Scumetti.
The case, filed in Tennessee, concerns a state law that nominally bans the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by minors for purposes of so-called gender-affirming care, all euphemisms. If removed, it means genital mutilation or chemical castration. (Related: Jeremy Portnoy: It's Time to Cut HHS' DEI Headcount)
And the justices will have to resolve the narrow legal issues actually at hand in this case. Namely, Tennessee's common-sense 14th Amendment injunction that says no state “refuses” to protect vulnerable youth from the predation of the billion-dollar transgender industry. The question is whether it violates. All persons within its jurisdiction shall enjoy equal protection of the laws. ”
The simple legal answer is clearly not. Famous debates from the US this week attorney general and American Civil Liberties Union Advocates notwithstanding, medical issues cannot be separated from issues of medical purpose. Consider the case of fentanyl. Small amounts of fentanyl have a legitimate purpose and can be used as a painkiller in a closed hospital setting. Fentanyl serves a myriad of illicit purposes, as anyone familiar with America's troubling drug overdose crisis can sadly attest. Similarly, a reasonable person can differentiate between testosterone therapy for adolescent boys with delayed puberty and testosterone therapy for adolescent girls with gender dysphoria.
Tennessee law treats all “persons within its jurisdiction” equally. The law states that the treatment for gender dysphoria for all children and adolescents “within its jurisdiction,” regardless of biological sex, is psychological treatment, not irreversible physical damage to the human body. It's just asking for something. Just a decade ago, this would have been considered so obvious that there was no need for legislation. Sadly, such laws are needed now because we live in morally confused and ideologically fervent times.
But the Scumetti case also involves a far more important and far-reaching controversy than the technical constitutional issues currently before the justices. More fundamentally, what was presented to the Supreme Court on Wednesday are two diametrically opposed conceptions of anthropology and man, of human existence itself and of man's relationship to his fellow humans, the nation, and God himself. It was.
Transgender organizations and the Biden-Harris administration argue that humans are essentially “choose your own adventure” books. In this dispensation, it is not enough to have free will in making decisions and choosing courses of action that define our lives. Rather, “free will” extends, in a vulgar sense, to the non-biologically reducible question of who exactly Homo sapiens, a member of the human race, is. The result of this pseudo-intellectual sophistry was that Ketanji Brown Jackson, then an intellectually disabled judge and now an intellectually disabled judge, said during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing that “a woman” It is a strange sight that he refuses to answer when asked a certain question. Gender activists have been forcing us for years that sexual orientation is determined at birth, but now it appears humans can choose to be male or female.
On the other side of the clash of civilizations are those who, in the infamous words of our 44th president, are still “struggling” and “clinging” to the norms that God himself established in 1990. book of genesis: “And God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; God created them male and female.”
You don't need a PhD to do that, even if you put the Good Book aside. In biology or embryology, to understand exactly what humans (and animals of all species) have. Two possible chromosome structures:XX represents “female” and XY represents “male”. From our observations of birds and bees, we know that humans are specially designed to be sexually complementary, and that when a couple is united, they become one flesh and, to quote Genesis again, “be fruitful and multiply.” I know you can.
These two visions of humanity are in mutually exclusive tension. There is no middle ground here. Only one vision can survive.
The mission of politicians, whether political or judicial in nature, is to make choices. It's unstatesmanlike — in fact, cowardly — for constitutional officials from all walks of life, including judges, to simply throw their hands in the air and declare they're content to let the chips fall where they may. . The great pre-Civil War debate over chattel slavery similarly concerned human nature. That conflict ended in tragedy, destruction, and massive bloodshed.
To avoid a similar fate, we need more people like Lincoln in our day and age, people like the great emancipator who have the courage to advance honest moral arguments. Perhaps the Supreme Court could use Scrumetti to start by declaring transgenderism a lie against humanity.
To learn more about Josh Hammer and read features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website. www.creators.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Copyright 2024 Creators.COM
All content produced by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan news distribution service, is available free of charge to legitimate news publishers with large audiences. All republished articles must include our logo, reporter byline, and DCNF affiliation. If you have any questions about our guidelines or our partnership, please contact us at licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
