A Denunciation of Bostock
I wish to express with proper force my rejection of the recent United States Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling concerning human sexuality. As president of The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), I am the head of an important institution dedicated to defending the dignity of the human person by drawing on the riches of the Catholic Church’s teachings and intellectual tradition. I have a responsibility to speak out.
When I heard that the Supreme Court, combining the cases of Bostock v. Layton County, Ga, Altitude Express v. Zarda and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Opportunity Employment Comm’n, had reinterpreted the prohibition on sex discrimination in employment in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity, I knew a watershed moment had arrived. The question going through my mind was what would I have wanted Catholic leaders to say after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision stripped legal protection for preborn children and unleashed the Tsunami of abortion on our land? I was living in Europe in 2015 and not in this position when the Obergefell v. Hodges decision came down. In their astonishing hubris, a majority among nine unelected justices dictated to the American people who can contract a valid civil marriage. They blithely ran roughshod over the results of popular referenda and laws at the state and federal level, as well as the consensus of human civilization going back to earliest times. I am not a legal expert, but I plainly see the travesty of justice the U.S. Supreme Court has inflicted on the USA with increasing frequency. Judicial tyranny is not too strong a term to describe it.
I want to be on record as denouncing this Bostock Supreme Court decision and raising the alarm with all people of goodwill. Professor Robert George points out how this ruling undermines “the Rule of Law.” There is no avoiding the fact that our current Supreme Court has a majority comfortable with rewriting legislation instead of applying it as written. The implications of such arbitrary use of raw judicial power on our constitutional order and society are frightening.
What can be as evident as the fact that marriage is not an institution for members of the same sex? How can it not be plain as day from basic mammalian biology that homo sapiens is a species composed of males and females? Certain kinds of frogs or other animals might be able to change their sexes, but so-called “sex reassignment” surgeries and taking cross-sex hormones only change outward appearances, not the male or female DNA in the cells throughout a person’s body. It is obviously a recipe for chaos to encourage individuals to declare themselves to be one of dozens of genders or sexual orientations. Here is just one poignant example. Girl’s and women’s sports will soon become unrecognizable if boys and men can simply affirm they are now trans-girls or trans-women and then use their masculine strength advantage to dominate many sports and break “women’s records.” I share the hopes of those who think this particular injustice will spark widespread outrage strong enough to generate a “the emperor has no clothes” moment.
The enforcers of the gender ideology fully intend to make all of society play along with their fictions or else. Not only that, but they require everyone to keep up to date with the ever-changing pronouns and acceptable/unacceptable speech. Where will this oppression end if we meekly surrender our rights to free speech and thought? There are already signs of the old observation that “revolutions eat their children.” Some feminists are being cast out or persecuted for refusing to go along with the new orthodoxy that men who declare themselves to be women must be treated as women in every respect.
In the United Kingdom pap smears were offered to “trans-women,” even though they do not have cervixes, because all “women” between certain ages are urged to get pap smears with their medical check-ups. Public Health England later changed their publication to say “cervical screening is for women and people with a cervix” so as not to exclude “trans-men.” This kind of absurdity may make one smile, but it points to a grave problem for Catholics and many others in health care. Religious liberty and conscientious objection rights may not be respected with regard to medical workers or institutions who refuse to comply with the new “gender” medicine. Lawsuits have already gone forward against Catholic hospitals who invoked the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care as their reason for not performing a hysterectomy on a perfectly healthy uterus because the person wanted the procedure as part of her transition to becoming a “man.”
We can see regulations or court rulings on the horizon mandating “health care benefits” like sex reassignment surgeries even though such procedures regularly mutilate genital organs and render the individuals permanently sterile. The world’s major faiths taught and teach that only men and women can marry each other and that male and female are fixed, not fluid, categories for humans. Only some extremely liberal religious denominations have changed their teachings on these fundamental truths. Formal cooperation with evil is never morally allowed, and that is what the gender ideologues are trying to impose. To speak plainly, persecution is predictable. Some may knuckle under, but Christianity has faced down absurd government requirements in the past, like worshiping the Roman Emperor as a living god.
I was pleased to see the June 15, 2020, statement of Archbishop José Gomez who, as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), said “the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively redefined the legal meaning of ‘sex’ in our nation’s civil rights law. This is an injustice that will have implications in many areas of life.” I also strongly agree with Archbishop Gomez’s conclusion: “Protecting our neighbors from unjust discrimination does not require redefining human nature.”
Objective biological facts and Catholic teaching are clear. Human beings are created male or female. When the word “sex” is completely redefined by courts, there is no safeguard left against the arbitrary and undemocratic reinterpretation of the plain meaning of the text of laws. The profoundly catastrophic consequences of such a state of affairs is difficult to overestimate. How can an ordered society survive shifting and binding reinterpretations of words and laws by the courts?
I nevertheless remain confident that Christ will not abandon His Church or those who suffer persecution for standing up for what we know to be true and right. Believers and the Church finally triumphed over the crushing totalitarian persecutions of Communism in the USSR and Central and Eastern Europe. We should be in no doubt that we are facing an immense challenge today but also that good shall overcome evil in the end.
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