By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
As our culture is drifting into the sinkhole of gender-fluidity, it is difficult not to laugh at the extent to which some people will sink. But laugh at your peril; these people are very serious and, sadly, Canadian law may protect this claim.
In British Columbia, there lives one Jessica Yaniv, born a male who claims to be a transgendered female, sometimes referring to her/himself as a transgendered lesbian. This person sometimes appears as male, Jonathan — his birth name, and sometimes as female. Her/his body is male and there seems to be no indication that he/she will undergo the knife anytime soon.
In any other time in our history we might feel a bit sorry for Jonathan and recognize him as a deeply confused individual needing psychiatric help. But not today. In today’s culture he/she is whatever he/she claims to be because, as everyone knows, gender is not binary and this individual has every right to claim to be any gender that seems appropriate at the time.
And, and this is a big “and,” the law in Canada, and many places in the United States, supports his lifestyle choices and will protect him/her from sexual or gender discrimination.
Thus the faux female Jessica has filed sixteen complaints with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission against businesses for discrimination. All of the business are women operated and have one thing in common: They are all estheticians, who, if you are unfamiliar with the profession, use waxing to remove unwanted hair.
Now there might not be any problem with Jessica’s request for services if he/she was asking for hair removal from the chin or even the belly. But what he was asking for, and this is at the heart of the issue, is a Brazilian bikini wax, during which the aesthetician must wax the client’s genital area. Naturally the women aestheticians refused, stating that bikini waxes were only offered to female clients, and, of course, they didn’t want to handle, well…I’ll leave that to your imagination.
In any event, the failure to serve men — remember “she” is still a biological male — does appear to violate Canadian law especially since, under the law, gender identity is a protected class and he can legally identify as female. Being called before the commission’s tribunal has already taken its toll on some of the women. One closed her home business to avoid litigation, and another paid Jonathan/Jessica $2,500 to withdraw his/her complaint against her.
And one of the attorneys has reported that his client was so upset over the complaint she had become “depressed, anxious, and sleepless.”
Yaniv explained his/her action in a Twitter post: “This is not about waxing. This [is] about businesses and individuals using their religion and culture to refuse service to protected groups because they don’t agree with it or the person and use that to illegally discriminate, contrary to the BC Human Rights Code.”
Of course, to the women it was about more than discrimination. They didn’t want to be forced or coerced into performing “intimate services” on a man.
A word of warning here from Ryan Anderson, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, who told the Daily Caller that if Nancy Pelosi’s Equality Act, which passed the House in May on a party-line vote, ever becomes law, its protection of gender identity would result in the same type of permissive harassment here in the United States.
But it doesn’t end there. Yaniv has now petitioned a local tribunal for permission to hold three topless swims for children 12 and up with their parents barred from attending. One wonders if this faux woman is really a predatory male finding a legal way to satisfy his needs.
Time will tell. Common sense would have prevented this from the beginning. But we seem to be in short supply of that lately.
Turning to another matter that should have been settled, and I thought the Supreme Court had already settled the matter; but it shows how far the progressives will go to deny reality.
In June of last year the Supreme Court decided a case we’ve touched upon in this column before, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFTA) v. Becerra. In a 5-4 decision the court ruled that a California law, the California Reproductive FACT Act, violated the First Amendment.
The FACT Act was California’s attempt to quash pro-life crisis pregnancy centers by requiring them to make certain public disclosures about their services. The law required licensed centers to post on-site notices that informed women that they had other options including free abortions from state-sponsored clinics.
California lawmakers pushed the bill through the legislature on behest of NARAL Pro-Choice America. It had compiled a report that alleged that the crisis pregnancy centers were providing misleading information. The California action was not done in isolation, several other jurisdictions had also enacted similar laws and ordinances. All were challenged with mixed results with those supporting the laws claiming that the state had a compelling interest to protect pregnant women. The law’s critics argued that it was an unconstitutional effort to coerce speech.
The California law, after being upheld by the lower courts, was finally appealed to the Supreme Court, which, as mentioned, held the law unconstitutional. A win for crisis pregnancy centers.
But, not so fast. In spite of the NIFLA ruling, the city of Hartford, Conn., in October of last year adopted a similar ordinance. The ordinance only applies to pro-life centers and requires them to post a disclaimer that implies that the centers are not qualified because there is not a licensed medical provider on site at all times. The disclaimer must also be delivered verbally to potential clients, either in person or by phone when an inquiry is made.
Ironically (or not), the ordinance excludes abortion clinics, community health centers, and all other health care entities from coverage. But if you are a pro-life crisis pregnancy center, you face a fine of $100 per day for failing to comply.
Caring Family Pregnancy Services, a private, faith-based, nonprofit, which provides pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, counseling, parenting classes, support groups, and adoption referrals, has filed suit in federal district court to enjoin the ordinance.
“The practical result of enforcing the Ordinance’s Compelled Speech provisions would be not only to inhibit a religious ministry from furthering its mission and message but also to force religious speakers to speak messages with misleading, confusing and negative implications,” Caring Family claims in its petition.
“Hartford is intent on interfering with certain views about life, pregnancy, and motherhood. Hartford has thus crafted a speaker-based, viewpoint-based law targeting the speech only of speakers espousing certain pro-life moral, religious, and philosophical beliefs,” it added.
One problem for the city: The same group of attorneys who represented NIFLA before the Supreme Court in the California case, the Alliance Defending Freedom, is also representing Caring Family Pregnancy Services.
There are some people who just can’t accept defeat.
Go figure.
(Mike can be reached at: DeaconMike@q.com.)
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