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Katherine M Acosta's avatar

The author responds with clarification about the transgendersim-as-religion argument.

"I'm hearing that some readers of my post are saying that transism really is a sort of religion, as though I should have noted that. I'd like to offer a response to that.

This viewpoint is understandable, but it is based on a category of confusion I see often, as feminists discuss social/cultural issues that take on a different legal status as they are codified or judicially examined. When does a belief system become a "religion", sociologically? That's irrelevant to when it becomes a religion, legally.

Transism is surely a belief system, however incoherent. Religious/spiritual imagery no doubt has crept in -- it's always good to invoke supernatural encouragement of one's belief system. But transism is not a religion in legal terms and the ADF Establishment Clause arguments are just more smoke.

Legally, certain kinds of belief systems are under constitutional protection. They are also under certain constitutional strictures. Generally, the government doesn't interfere with their practices, no matter how bizarre, so long as the practices apply only to their adherents. See the Church of Babalu case. Generally, the government can't tax their income, a very important protection. They are even exempted from certain laws of general applicability that are applied to all other institutions; their ministers can discriminate in employment, for example. They can refuse to perform abortions in their hospitals. They can counsel their adherents and discipline them, within certain bounds, as they wish. They can say whatever they like from their pulpits. The government can't prefer one of these legally-recognized religions over another.

The strictures are also important. The government does not fund them with public (taxpayer) money. The government requires them on the whole to follow laws of general applicability. Where government funding and licensing is provided, the government sets the rules of professional practice.

The religious right wing has mounted a legal campaign for many years to expand religious legal protections and weaken the strictures. Looking at the examples above, the right wings of Christian churches (including LDS, Catholic, and Evangelical churches for instance), have mounted a coordinated legal campaign to hide the sources of their income, be able to introduce and lobby for legislative bills, influence secular politics with dark money, stack courts with their adherents, obtain religious exemptions from laws of general applicability, and participate in government programs funded with taxpayer money.

The churches also want to able to proselytize to non-adherents and enforce their belief systems against non-adherents, even where they are doing so with government money.

This is the religious issue in Tingley v Ferguson. The religious right-wing wants to persuade the courts that a government-licensed professional counselor working with an organization that receives federal funding should be allowed to counsel women, LGB and T people, and people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, according to his or her Christian religious tenets. Their lawyers are careful to cloud this motivation by promoting secular arguments such as freedom of speech, and in this case, Establishment Clause protections.

The reversal here is that the RW religious institutions WANT the government to get rid of the Establishment Clause when it applies to them. Here, they're agin it. Next case, they'll be tryin' to get more taxpayer money for themselves and will say it doesn't apply to them.

Lately they have added feminist arguments, effectively, as we know.

Now, they have flown to the heights of sophistry by arguing that transism is a religion in the same legal sense they are. Give me a break.

My point in the OP is that WoLF has become so involved in this religious right wing campaign that it is now morphing its advocacy-for-women's-rights arguments into religious arguments. It's like the movie The Thing, where the people turn into something really weird. WoLF says it stands for women. Promoting spurious right-wing arguments for a broadening of protections for the Christian churches does not seem to me to be standing for women in the Tingley case.

WoLF can advocate for whatever it wants. All I ask is that they stop telling courts they're radical feminists."

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Circe Black's avatar

I don’t think it’s weird at all, on the contrary, making the argument that trans is not a human rights issue but the establishment of a government religion infringing on the rights of the Christian majority, is the only way it will be picked out piece by piece from the law. Trans has transcended the realm of material facts into the metaphysical where it must compete with the other religions.

“Does this sound like a radical feminist argument to you?” Well kinda since I and other radical feminists have made the serious argument that trans is a religion (which is likely where ADF got the idea, conservatives have stolen 99.9% of their material from RFs) but even if it’s not a radical feminist theory based argument it sounds like one the court would be interested in.

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