President Donald Trump’s deputies have begun to remove a pro-transsexual legal time bomb hidden inside Obamacare by officials working by former President Barack Obama.
The removal process began May 2, when Trump’s deputies at the Department of Health and Human Services requested a pause in a Texas lawsuit filed by mainstream groups against the pro-transsexual rule in Obamacare. The rule, dubbed Section 1557, is important because it provides a mechanism for progressives judges on the Supreme Court to ignite an explosion of pro-transsexual lawsuits against myriad companies and civic groups.
The hidden transgender rule “appears to be a little thing, but it is a huge thing because it is a fundamental attack on religious liberty and the rule of law,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. “It is a very good thing that the Trump administration is going in this direction … [but] we need much stronger actions and the force of the bully pulpit,” said Brown.
Since his inauguration, Trump’s aides are authorized to defend — or to not defend — Obamacare from lawsuits. Trump’s deputies are now setting themselves up to quit fighting the lawsuit, titled Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell, and give the plaintiffs what they want by rewriting the rule without the pro-transsexual provision. The agency’s request to the judge stated that a delay:
would permit HHS to reconsider the challenged aspects (or other aspects) of the Rule in light of its desire to assess the Rule’s necessity, reasonableness, and efficacy—or lack thereof—and in light of Plaintiffs’ challenges to it and this Court’s conclusion that certain of those challenges are likely to succeed … Defendants request that the Court remand this matter to HHS, and stay this litigation, pending further rulemaking proceedings.
The May 2 request follows Trump’s February decision to cancel a legal memo from the Department of Education which told K-12 schools that laws against sex discrimination also require school officials to help children who announce they ant to change their sex. That education memo also triggered a predictable series of lawsuits which would eventually allow the Supreme Court to impose the transsexual ideology on Americans.
In 2009, Congress included a rule in Obamacare which barred insurance companies from setting different monthly prices for the two sexes.
In May 2016, Obama’s deputies expanded the rule, titled Section 1557, to include discrimination based on the notion of “gender identity.” That term is intended to describe and validate some people’s desire to become a member of the opposite sex, even though the desire is biologically impossible to accomplish. So the new rule declared that the federal government would support future lawsuits against doctors who decline to accept patients’ claims that they are members of the opposite sex.
That expanded legal commandment in Section 1557 predictably prompted multiple lawsuits from healthcare providers and civic groups who recognize who recognize that men and women are biologically and socially different, even as they are also complementary and legally equal. “We are being forced to treat something — that used to be considered as a psychiatric condition — as something … [but] a boy who sincerely thinks he is a girl is having a delusion because it just is not true,” said Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“When you insist people tell lies and act on lies… there is a potential for endless confusion [and] there is a danger to patients’ safety,” she added.
One of those lawsuits is the Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell lawsuit. The Texas judge announced in December that he would freeze enforcement of Section 1557 pending further arguments, and Trump’s deputies are set to rewrite the Section 1557 regulation to meet the demands of the plaintiffs.
But advocates for transsexuality are pushing other lawsuits towards the U.S. Supreme Court, where at least four progressive judges have suggested they have the authority to insert the transsexual demand into the constitution.
If the Supreme Court agrees that “gender identity” should be included in anti-discrimination law, alongside sex and age, it would set off an explosion of “gender identity” lawsuits. In time, those lawsuits would force the nation’s health-care providers — plus every other company and civic organization in the United States — to comply whenever one of their male customers says he has the “gender identity” of a woman and says he must be treated as a woman. The companies and civic societies would also have to jump whenever a female says she has the “gender identity” of a man and must be treated as a man.
If practice, the court’s support for “gender identity” ideology would allow progressives to threaten ordinary Americans with lawsuits unless they agreed to tell lies about biology and sex to themselves, their friends and children, said Brown. “This is what happens when you start putting a big lie in the law — all the power of the law will be used to enforce the lie … reaching to where you would never have believed,” he said.
The elites’ push to bend civic society so that it helps a small minority pretend to switch their sex has already cracked social rules for single-sex bathrooms and shelters for battered women, sports leagues for girls, hiking groups for boys, K-12 curricula and university speech codes, religious freedoms, free speech, the social status of women, parents’ rights in childrearing, practices to help teenagers, women’s expectations of beauty, culture and civic society, scientific research, prison safety, civic ceremonies, school rules, men’s sense of masculinity, law enforcement, and children’s sexual privacy.
Anyone who disagrees with this top-down pro-transsexual ideological revolution would be sued by advocates for transsexuals, Brown said. The advocates “are fully intent on making a brave new world in which those who disagree with them are punished and marginalized [by government power] … it is about punishing those who continue to point to reality, that there are objective truths out there,” such as the complementary existence of men and women, he said.
Before Trump’s surprise win in November, Democrats expected to get a pro-transsexual majority in the court that would impose the transsexual policy on the nation during the next few years. But Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, is on the court and is unlikely to support the transgender claims.
The apparent decision to stop defending Section 1557 is lamented by pro-transsexual groups, including the National Center for Transgender Equality, which said:
The Section 1557 regulation has been literally life-saving for transgender people all across the country, who are routinely turned away from emergency rooms and doctors’ offices and refused coverage for critical medical care. Now, the Trump administration is going after transgender people yet again and trying to take away these basic protections. The administration is rejecting the views of every major medical association, most courts, and most Americans, who believe that people should not be denied health care because of who they are. That’s not just bad science and bad law—it’s a dangerous attack on transgender people’s ability to survive.
The decision was also slammed by a medical association whose members provide medical services to people who wish to change their sex:
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) opposes the Trump administration’s effort to curtail enforcement of section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1557 provides guidance concerning the non-discrimination provisions of the ACA, which are designed to improve access to healthcare for … transgender people. Section 1557 also expressly prohibits sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and gender identity.
WPATH leaders condemn any attempt to limit access to any health care, especially for marginalized or targeted populations, and especially when such actions are motivated by prejudice or on religious grounds.
However, the transsexual movement still has plenty of money, strong backing from major gay lobby groups and courtroom advocacy groups, plus overwhelming support among progressives and establishment media outlets.
Also, up to 18 states currently require medical professionals to accept transsexual claims, and some states use taxpayers funds for hormones and surgery sought by people wishing to change sex. In addition, the federal Medicare board decided in 2014 to reverse the long-standing regulation against funding medical services for transsexual surgery. Many judges are boosting the agenda, so the issue will eventually reach the Supreme Court.
But the transsexual agenda is unpopular and helped damage the Democratic candidate in 2016, according to Obama. A recent poll shows that it has the support of fewer than one-quarter of Americans. A majority support Trump’s view that “local communities and states should make the decision, and I feel very strongly about that. The federal government should not be involved.”
Also, very few people want to live as members of the opposite sex, despite media magnification of some individuals’ actions. Nationwide, fewer than 1 in 2,400 adults have changed their names from one sex to the other sex, according to a study of the 2010 census.