Guest post examines Wolf’s amicus brief writing activities in aid of Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) legal strategy, WoLF’s legal team, and its latest amicus filing.
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."
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.
"even if it’s not a radical feminist theory based argument it sounds like one the court would be interested in" - I'm sure our (now) radical right Court WOULD be interested! I think the point is, why would a group that asserts it is "unapologetically radical feminist" aid a powerful and well-financed anti-feminist organization in their litigation strategy? Helping ADF is NOT helping women, and it's hard for me to understand why women don't see that as the religious right achieves its goal of overturning abortion rights, now gunning for contraception, and floating the idea of doing away with no fault divorce.
90% of these arguments are simply ad hominem attacks.
The amicus briefs are not “anti trans” unless you mean that they’re anti -men who identify as trans entering women’s spaces with the power of the state to support them in doing so.
WoLf may be problematic but so far they’ve only fought for women’s rights (which is branded as anti trans hate speech).
Ad hominem is an attack on a person rather than a position they're maintaining. This is a critique of a litigation strategy. And the argument is that aiding an anti-feminist, Christian nationalist organization achieve its goals is not "fighting for women's rights" even if it achieves a limited anti gender identity goal.
I think I have a nuance of difference here. Trangenderism is in large part a quasi religious belief system that posits in contravention to objective biological science that sex doesn’t exist & is “assigned at birth” and/or is a “spectrum” and that an essential “gender identity”- a gendered brain or soul - exists in everyone and may or may not correspond (based on sex stereotypes) to one’s sexed body. That belief system in trans identified individuals is usually accompanied by cross dressing or other forms of gender nonconformity and some degree of medicalization - puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, & surgeries- so that the body may approximate the appearance of the other sex or appear as a mixture of male and female or “neither” (“nonbinary”).
As a feminist who is myself gender nonconforming, I have no problems with cross dressing and gender nonconformity though I am not crazy about extreme “masculine” & “feminine” stereotypes regardless of the person’s sex. i think adults should be free to dress and call themselves what they want. Though I don’t agree with medicalization, adults don’t need my approval in engaging in cosmetic medical interventions. However it should be with fully informed consent about the risks and without being misled into believing that it is actually possible to change sex. I think these “treatments” should be banned in minors who it turns out are majority lesbian or gay.
I also have no problem with people believing wharever they want. However, I have a MAJOR problem with imposing one’s beliefs about sex and gender on everyone else and making law and public policy based on those beliefs.
My refusal to embrace the beliefs of people at work who deny sex and think recognizing or naming biological sex (in my case when discussing abortion rights)is “bigotry” against trans people, led to my firing last year.
So though there are many other things a feminist could say that were not included in this amicus, part of the problem IS the imposition of a quasi religious belief system (not based in science or material reality) on everyone else. Freedom of belief (religious or non religious) needs to be a right everyone enjoys. To me, that is or should be a Leftist or progressive value.
Everything one disagrees with is not a "religion," tho? Is anti-racism a "religion" that should not be foisted on people? ADF has previously said that humanism and secularism are types of "religion." And aren't the larger points that 1) by writing briefs like these, WoLF is aiding ADF in their overall litigation strategy, which is to dismantle or make irrelevant, the Establishment clause in the Constitution? (See Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers.); and 2) that helping ADF is NOT helping women - ADF's goals are explicitly anti-feminist.
No, everything isn’t, certainly anti racism is not a religion nor is secularism. But gender identity ideoligy has some aspects of a cult-like quasi religion. (I said “quasi” so the analogy doesn’t fit perfectly). It includes an irrational belief system that contradicts and denies material reality and science and demands that othrrs do the same, and an authoritarian rigidity that treats nonbelievers or anyone questioning at all as apostates and grave sinners deserving of no platforming, ostracism, and severe punishment, like doled out to the accused witches of old.
And no, I’m not for writing amicus with ADF or under their direction or taking their money.
The biggest problem with the brief is not what was said but what wasn’t said. A specifically feminist critique should have also been included.
I don’t think feminists should ever merge their messaging and funding with the organized far Right. I would go further and say that feminists need to be independent of both patriarchal corporate parties (and corporate funding generally) neither of whom have women’s interests at heart.
I'd really like to see this IRS form that shows that WOLF has received over a million dollars from secret sources, but the link only takes us to the SPLC website.
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."
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.
"even if it’s not a radical feminist theory based argument it sounds like one the court would be interested in" - I'm sure our (now) radical right Court WOULD be interested! I think the point is, why would a group that asserts it is "unapologetically radical feminist" aid a powerful and well-financed anti-feminist organization in their litigation strategy? Helping ADF is NOT helping women, and it's hard for me to understand why women don't see that as the religious right achieves its goal of overturning abortion rights, now gunning for contraception, and floating the idea of doing away with no fault divorce.
90% of these arguments are simply ad hominem attacks.
The amicus briefs are not “anti trans” unless you mean that they’re anti -men who identify as trans entering women’s spaces with the power of the state to support them in doing so.
WoLf may be problematic but so far they’ve only fought for women’s rights (which is branded as anti trans hate speech).
Ad hominem is an attack on a person rather than a position they're maintaining. This is a critique of a litigation strategy. And the argument is that aiding an anti-feminist, Christian nationalist organization achieve its goals is not "fighting for women's rights" even if it achieves a limited anti gender identity goal.
I think I have a nuance of difference here. Trangenderism is in large part a quasi religious belief system that posits in contravention to objective biological science that sex doesn’t exist & is “assigned at birth” and/or is a “spectrum” and that an essential “gender identity”- a gendered brain or soul - exists in everyone and may or may not correspond (based on sex stereotypes) to one’s sexed body. That belief system in trans identified individuals is usually accompanied by cross dressing or other forms of gender nonconformity and some degree of medicalization - puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, & surgeries- so that the body may approximate the appearance of the other sex or appear as a mixture of male and female or “neither” (“nonbinary”).
As a feminist who is myself gender nonconforming, I have no problems with cross dressing and gender nonconformity though I am not crazy about extreme “masculine” & “feminine” stereotypes regardless of the person’s sex. i think adults should be free to dress and call themselves what they want. Though I don’t agree with medicalization, adults don’t need my approval in engaging in cosmetic medical interventions. However it should be with fully informed consent about the risks and without being misled into believing that it is actually possible to change sex. I think these “treatments” should be banned in minors who it turns out are majority lesbian or gay.
I also have no problem with people believing wharever they want. However, I have a MAJOR problem with imposing one’s beliefs about sex and gender on everyone else and making law and public policy based on those beliefs.
My refusal to embrace the beliefs of people at work who deny sex and think recognizing or naming biological sex (in my case when discussing abortion rights)is “bigotry” against trans people, led to my firing last year.
So though there are many other things a feminist could say that were not included in this amicus, part of the problem IS the imposition of a quasi religious belief system (not based in science or material reality) on everyone else. Freedom of belief (religious or non religious) needs to be a right everyone enjoys. To me, that is or should be a Leftist or progressive value.
Everything one disagrees with is not a "religion," tho? Is anti-racism a "religion" that should not be foisted on people? ADF has previously said that humanism and secularism are types of "religion." And aren't the larger points that 1) by writing briefs like these, WoLF is aiding ADF in their overall litigation strategy, which is to dismantle or make irrelevant, the Establishment clause in the Constitution? (See Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers.); and 2) that helping ADF is NOT helping women - ADF's goals are explicitly anti-feminist.
No, everything isn’t, certainly anti racism is not a religion nor is secularism. But gender identity ideoligy has some aspects of a cult-like quasi religion. (I said “quasi” so the analogy doesn’t fit perfectly). It includes an irrational belief system that contradicts and denies material reality and science and demands that othrrs do the same, and an authoritarian rigidity that treats nonbelievers or anyone questioning at all as apostates and grave sinners deserving of no platforming, ostracism, and severe punishment, like doled out to the accused witches of old.
And no, I’m not for writing amicus with ADF or under their direction or taking their money.
The biggest problem with the brief is not what was said but what wasn’t said. A specifically feminist critique should have also been included.
I don’t think feminists should ever merge their messaging and funding with the organized far Right. I would go further and say that feminists need to be independent of both patriarchal corporate parties (and corporate funding generally) neither of whom have women’s interests at heart.
I'd really like to see this IRS form that shows that WOLF has received over a million dollars from secret sources, but the link only takes us to the SPLC website.
Oops! It's publicly posted on their website. I'll correct the link tomorrow.
https://womensliberationfront.org/womens-liberation-front-financials