Municipal SOGI Laws Criminalize Diversity

Hugh Carey / Wyoming Tribune Eagle

Last October, after five hours of contentious testimony that carried on toward midnight, the Cheyenne City Council passed a “Discrimination Resolution.” It was supposed to be the final outcome of a full-court press from the progressive lobby that began in the spring of 2015.

Council member Annette Williams (who has since lost her bid for reelection) had pressed for a law mimicking an Ordinance which was sprung upon the city of Laramie in April of 2015. It uses extremely broad powers to give the city attorney’s office investigative powers to impose penalties upon anything that it deems discriminatory, “based upon … actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The language of this ordinance had been hammered out behind the scenes with several of the council members and the LGBT lobby, Wyoming Equality. It has not even a modicum of protection for free speech and religious liberty but threatens even private schools, and Laramie’s churches with fines, jail time and mandatory sensitivity training unless they get fully on board with the latest LGBT dictates. 

While it was quickly rammed through the Laramie City Council over the objections of many citizens, it quickly lost steam as it was introduced in other towns like Jackson and Cheyenne. In addition to the lack of First Amendment protections, there was significant worry about the high cost the city would pay in fighting numerous legal challenges to the ordinance.

In Cheyenne, these factors combined to stop the ordinance in its tracks. After consulting with Wyoming Equality and the ACLU, Williams sought to breathe new life into the issue by dropping the penalties and the investigatory powers converting Laramie’s “ordinance” into a compromise “resolution.”

The resolution states, “it is the policy of the City to reject discrimination of any kind and to respect the inherent worth of every person, with regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, family status, veteran status, disability, marital status, or source of income.”

This was certainly an improvement. But still, there were serious objections to the compromise Resolution. It added the ill-defined legal terms, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to city code. These are such fluid categories that they leave room for countless unintended consequences.

Nevertheless, at least some on the city council were persuaded that this compromise could resolve the issue and allow closure. It was a vain hope. Progressive compromises don’t settle issues, they only provide a launching pad for the next offensive.

The truce hoped for in the compromise resolution lasted a mere eight months. Now already Wyoming Equality is working with council members to bring Laramie’s punitive measures to Cheyenne. These include a $750 fine, 6 months in jail. Also, the definition of “public accommodation” is so incredibly expansive that it can be used against practically any entity that opens its doors to the public.

If a city hopes to treat all citizens fairly, regardless of their real or perceived identities or ideas, good laws are already on the books. They allow every citizen, business, or organization freedom to serve others in the best way they know how.

Good citizens of every town in Wyoming already offer a diversity of options which customers and clients can freely choose according to the approach best serving their own needs. An ordinance which would arbitrarily label some of these options “discrimination,” limits diversity and robs everyone of a full expression of options.

A business owner hiring a public receptionist should be free to take appearance into account. He shouldn’t have to worry that his motives will later be second-guessed by the discrimination police. Presentation matters. Perceived identities have nothing to do with it.

A clinical psychologist, using her training and experience, may think that her client’s alternate identity is treatable. She’s not basing this decision on whether the perceived identity is male or female. That’s clinically irrelevant. But a discrimination ordinance could unleash an investigation in one case, but not the other.

A surgeon may decline to remove a perfectly functioning organ because he believes it would do harm to his patient. What gives a city the expertise to second-guess his professional judgement?

Real medical discrimination gives inferior treatment based on irrelevant factors. SOGI discrimination codes which enforce irrelevancies will not make our towns any healthier.

A father who sees an adult male follow his daughter into the locker room is rightly concerned for her privacy and safety. It is not based on the man’s perceived identity. What threatens his daughter’s dignity is the man’s maleness!

Yet both men and women have been penalized for raising such natural concerns in places where SOGI discrimination is enforced. Do we really want to be a place where fathers are at legal risk for being good fathers?

Most good citizens of Wyoming still believe that sex is a relevant factor in treating all people fairly under the law. It is unjust and harmful to businesses, organizations, and individual citizens to assume that good-faith decisions based on sexual differences are, rather, malicious discrimination based on hate and prejudice.

Exemptions for certain religious organizations, or for businesses under an arbitrary number of employees, can toss a bone to those who oppose these ordinances, but such cut-outs do not make them any less unjust.

It is insulting and irrational to criminalize legitimate responses to the real world but then grant “exemptions” that allow certain people and certain organizations to remain “criminals.” Not only would this marginalize and stigmatize many of Wyoming’s most upstanding citizens, such cut-outs are sure to be the next targets to be taken out by some future progressive “compromise.”

Evanston and the rest of Wyoming’s municipalities, should learn from the events in our capitol. Cheyenne is a cautionary tale for us all. Be in constant contact with your own city council representative. Let them know your mind on Laramie’s ordinance and ask them to inform you if there are any behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts from Wyoming Equality.

Inform yourselves of the legal and First Amendment issues involved in SOGI ordinances. Beware that their real-world impact is never as advertised. The promise to enhance diversity and toleration invariably translates to an intolerance of traditional values and the criminalization of diversity.

Prevent or Promote Suicide, not Both

Over the past 5 years Wyoming has averaged the highest suicide rate in the nation. Montana is a near second, and both are more than 8% higher than the third ranking state, Alaska. Over 24 people per 100,000 commit suicide in Wyoming. That translates to almost 142 of our youth and peers who die by their own hand each year.

For Wyoming, suicide prevention is an urgent concern.

To make matters worse, these numbers are on the rise. Wyoming’s suicide rate has increased 15% over the last five years. This increase outpaces the 11.8% increase nationwide.

Suicide Prevention, more than any other safety concern, is a battle for the mind. By making people mindful of their health and safety, we can reduce accidents and diseases by percentage points, but cannot stop them entirely. On the other hand, when you change the mind of someone considering suicide, it is 100% effective.

For this reason, suicide rates are the most direct barometer of our culture’s attitude toward life. The fact that we have seen a steady increase in suicide rates over the past 30 years tells us that something sinister is afoot. The additional fact that this national increase has doubled since 2005 should be reason enough to look to the past decade for clues.

It should be no surprise to anyone that our current surge in suicide rates roughly corresponds to nationwide efforts to promote suicide. In 1980, the Hemlock Society was founded to promote the “right to die.” Then “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian, wrote a series of articles promoting physician assisted suicide.

By 1990 he performed his first public assisted suicide of a 54 year-old woman. Over the next 8 years he terminated 130 people, most after his medical license was revoked. Finally, he was convicted of 2nd degree murder and sentenced to 10-25 years. But this did not stop the death march.

In 1997 the Hemlock Society scored their first major victory. An Oregon ballot initiative was allowed to become law. For the first time in US history physicians were legally permitted to violate the Hippocratic Oath and prescribe lethal drugs for the express purpose of suicide.

Efforts to duplicate such laws in other states met defeat, after defeat. This caused the Hemlock Society to developed a new marketing campaign and change their name to Compassion and Choices in 2003. Even after this, legislative victories still eluded them. So they turned to the courts.

In 2008, a doctor, backed by the former Hemlock Society, sought to overturn Montana law by arguing a constitutional "right to die." A District Judge granted their wish, only to be overturned by the State Supreme Court. Nevertheless, that same ruling declared that state laws forbidding physician assisted suicide only applied if the suicide attempt failed. As long as the victim/patient actually dies, Montana doctors are immune from prosecution. Talk about an incentive factor!

About the same time, Washington passed a ballot initiative similar to Oregon's. Vermont in 2013 and California in 2016 passed physician assisted suicide legislatively, while Colorado passed it through Proposition 106 on last November’s ballot.

A review of this history demonstrates that the gradual increase in suicide rates beginning in the 1980s coincides with the activities of Dr. Death and the Hemlock society. It further shows that the recent surge in suicide rates coincides with the formal legalization of physician assisted suicide in 6 states.

Of course, coincidence and correlation do not prove causation. Social science is never that neat and tidy. But we would be foolish to ignore the coincidence of these trends and claim that our overall problem with suicide is unrelated to any of these developments.

Even the Oregon Health Authority, in a September 2010 News Release, noted that, “after decreasing in the 1990s, suicide rates have been increasing significantly since 2000.” They also admitted that by 2007 Oregon’s suicide rate was 35% more than the national average.(PDF photocopy here.) Today it remains 37% higher than average. This in spite of the fact that physician assisted suicides, by law, are not counted as suicides!

That being said, Wyoming makes it clear that there is no one-to-one correspondence between state laws and suicide rates. Attitudes toward suicide do not respect lines on a map. What happens in Oregon does not stay in Oregon. It not only creeps like gangrene from state to state, but through social media, and the national conversation in general, it infects the minds of all people, young and old alike.

The fact of the matter is that laws teach. Good laws teach good things; bad laws, bad things. Physician assisted suicide laws teach that one legitimate answer to suffering is self-inflicted death. They teach that some human lives are, in the eyes of the state, pointless and unworthy of suicide prevention efforts. They teach that there is nothing beyond this life which makes any amount of suffering worth enduring.

In 2014 Michelle Carter acted on the lessons taught by these laws. She texted encouragements to her boyfriend who was wanting to commit suicide, telling him to carry it out when he had second thoughts. Now he is dead of carbon monoxide poisoning, and last Friday (June 16, 2017) she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Did we somehow expect this wouldn't happen?

We may try to quarantine the teachings of assisted suicide and tell young people a different story. But youth are not stupid. They are not known for accepting the line, “do as I say, not as I do.” In fact, young people especially, are more apt to imitate their elders than abide by empty distinctions.

Since 2005 the suicide rate for those 75-84 has only risen 5.9%, but during the same period, the suicide rate of those 55-64 rose 36%. Worse, the suicide rate of 10 to 14 year-olds jumped 51%! (CDC: Causes of Death by Age Group) The Hemlock Society wanted the elderly to have “the right to die.” They inflicted it, instead, upon their grandchildren.

Neither can you put the genie back in the bottle by restricting it to “terminal illness.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we are all terminally ill. Not a single one of us is going to make it out of this life alive. For any person in the midst of suffering and depression, there is no magical line between “6 months to live” and “6 years to live.”

As anyone knows who works to help people out of depression and suicidal thoughts, it is not suffering which drives suicide, but purposeless suffering. For those who have hope and purpose, no amount of suffering can quench the desire for life.

If you want proof of that last statement, read Man’s Search for Meaning, by holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl. This brilliant psychologist didn’t just theorize about suffering and survival, he was tested in the greatest hell ever inflicted upon humankind, and lived to tell what he learned.

Suicide concerns us all for two reasons. First, entire families and communities are hurt by the suicide of even one person. Out of love for those with suicidal thoughts, and care for all their loved ones, it is all of our business to encourage and support life in difficult times.

Second, suicide prevention concerns us because we all live on the knife’s edge. None of us are strangers to suffering and sorrow. None of us are immune from terrible thoughts. We hang by a thread called “hope.” Hope is true, hope will not disappoint. But hope is a thin life-line, and easily cut.

It is possible either to encourage hope and prevent suicide, or to whack away at hope’s thread and promote suicide. We cannot do both. I know what my purpose will be. Will you join me?

Thee Federalist: Basic Human Decency Shouldn’t Be Political, But It Is

 Many simple things have become so politicized that many ordinary, decent people are culturally conditioned to ignore anything and everything that might call ethics into question.

After a two-year investigation, the Department of Justice recently announced charges against 15 people who trafficked in eagle body parts.

U.S. Attorney Randy Seiler …described one operation as basically a ‘chop-shop for eagles’ in which eagle feathers were stuffed into garbage bags. He said it was clear that it was a moneymaking operation and that the feathers and eagle parts such as talons and beaks were treated as merchandise. ‘There was no cultural sensitivity. There was no spirituality,’ Seiler said. ‘There was no tradition in the manner in which these defendants handled these birds.’

 Continue reading on the Federalist.

Get Ready for Assisted Suicide’s Twisted Language

Last November Colorado passed Proposition 106, making it the 5th state to legislate assisted suicide. Oregon, Washington, California, and Vermont already had assisted suicide laws on the books. Montana also has it not by legislation, but by an activist court.
Since Wyoming is sandwiched between Montana and Colorado, it is a sure bet that we will see ever increasing efforts to bring assisted suicide to our state. Don’t be caught flat footed. Now is time to understand the issues and be prepared for the onslaught.
If Colorado is any indication, there will be precious little room for rational thought once the former Hemlock Society decides to push the issue. Last year Colorado saw 5.7 million untraceable dollars poured into an advertising campaign that outspent the voices for suicide prevention 2-to-1.
Were these dollars from regular folks interested in suicide? Or was it global tycoons and an insurance industry intent on buying a victory for their agenda? We have no way of knowing, but common sense can probably make a good guess.

While we can only guess about who’s pushing for suicide laws, we don’t need to guess about the impact of the laws themselves. Oregon passed the first assisted suicide laws almost 20 years ago. By now, we have ample evidence to discern their real-life consequences. Let’s look at just three of them.
The first casualty of assisted suicide is medicine itself. Medicine is defined as “a substance used for the treatment or prevention of disease.” But states with assisted suicide laws redefine medicine itself. For them it can also mean its opposite: “a substance used with the explicit intent to cause death.”
Let that sink in. Consider the implications of turning the word “medicine” upside-down. For all of your life, when you went to the medical center, or were given medicine, you could rest assured that they were intending to help your ailing body. Now, you have to ask for clarity. Is this “medicine” to help me live? Or to help me die? Chilling.

From the very dawn of modern medicine, the Hippocratic Oath has defined medical ethics. It is one of the oldest binding documents in history, and reads, in part: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.” Countless doctors bound themselves by this oath and can be forced by assisted suicide laws to break a solemn oath.
Besides the infringement on the consciences of our physicians, we should consider the staggering effect on the entire practice of medicine when this fundamental pillar of medical ethics is swept away.
This sweeping redefinition of medicine is so incredible that your average man on the street simply can’t take it in. But you can bet your boots that insurance companies are counting on it. Now they have the backing of state law to consider death as a viable treatment option.
You already know the frustration and harm that insurance companies can cause by refusing to cover a medicine or a procedure, insisting on a cheaper generic, or a lower quality option. Wait until your doctor tells you that your insurance won’t cover the life-saving procedure he is recommending, but they will cover lethal drugs!
That is exactly the scenario that is already playing out in California and Oregon. Dr. Brian Callister recently reported that insurance carriers in California and Oregon denied life-saving treatments for his patients while offering, instead, to pay for assisted suicide.

In times past, we could at least sue the insurance company for coverage. But now, these states have provided legal cover for greed by designating suicide as a legitimate medical procedure.
Prop. 106 in Colorado tried partially to address this outrage by stipulating that assisted suicide cannot be legally considered as an option unless someone is “terminally ill.” This is further defined as someone who has less than six months to live.
On the face of it, this restriction on assisted suicide can cut out some of the most blatant abuses. But, again, 20 years of experience have shown us that the designation “six months to live” is not so solid as it seems. There are at least three ways that this safeguard can be skirted.
First, there is doctor-shopping. In Colorado, the enforcement of this stricture is left entirely up to the attending physician and another consulting physician. They have no oversight to make sure their predictions for the future are sound. Physicians and family members intent on providing assisted suicide will have no trouble finding a like-minded colleague who will back up his diagnosis.
Second, dire predictions are notoriously inaccurate. There are oodles of cases where people out-lived their doctor’s best estimates by months and even years. What recourse does a family have when a doctor’s inaccurate prediction becomes the basis for a patient’s suicide? How do you undo a mistaken suicide?
Third, it is an open question whether the prediction of “six months to live” is calculated with, or without life-sustaining treatments? For instance, a diabetic can live indefinitely as long as he receives insulin. But if you were to calculate how long he might live without insulin, his life span may only be days. Likewise, patients with AIDS can live for years with the proper medication, but lives are severely shortened when they stop taking it.
Over the past 20 years, we have seen much fudging of the six-month limit by calculating life-expectancy without the simple medicine to sustain it. How long will it be before a person is judged to have only six-months to live assuming the withdrawal of food or water? There is nothing in Colorado’s law which would prevent that. This has the potential to render the “terminally ill” requirement as virtually meaningless.
Not only are doctors being asked to break the Hippocratic Oath and to fudge life-expectancy predictions, they are also being commanded to lie! I know that sounds alarmist and incredible. So let me simply quote from the Colorado law: “The attending physician shall sign the death certificate of a qualified individual who obtained a self-administered aid-in-dying medication… the cause of death shall be listed as the underlying terminal illness.”
Even though it is absolutely clear to all involved that the self-administered drug is the cause of death, the attending physician is forbidden, by law, from reporting this on the death certificate. Why this stipulation? Because life insurance policies almost always have a clause which does not allow a claim when the insured person commits suicide. So, by making the attending physician falsify the death certificate, state governments are aiding and abetting fraud against insurance companies.
The redefinition of medicine itself, meaningless and unenforceable restrictions, and the falsification of death certificates are three examples of the way language is twisted by assisted suicide laws. These are not just hypothetical possibilities. They are realities that have been happening for almost two decades in those states which have passed assisted suicide legislation.
We have not even begun to talk about how the promotion of assisted suicide undercuts our ongoing efforts to prevent suicides across the board. That will have to be a conversation for another day. These problems alone are enough to give us serious pause.
Now is the time to be educated and equipped. This issue is not going away any time soon.

Fatherhood and the Public Good

When you think about your father, what do you think about first? Do you think about the moment of your conception or do you think about your relationship with him?

Even though an act nine months before we were born made him our father, fatherhood is about a relationship. And that relationship defines whether he is considered a good father or a bad father. Nobody considers their father any good if there is no relationship at all. But the better the relationship, the better we rate fathers.

A father is the one who loves, nurtures and cares for you, for life. Every single child who ever lived wants that kind of a father. Kids want a father who is involved in their lives, loves their mother, and lives in their house.

Father’s Day recognizes the men who have stepped up to make that ideal a reality. Nobody is perfect. Neither is any father. Every single one of us can look critically at our father and find real and painful failures. And fathers, like me, can find plenty of failures if we’re willing to admit it.

Sometimes the criticism is too harsh, and sometimes it is well-deserved. Either way, what you should notice is that we all agree on the definition of a good father. Each and every one of us has an ideal father in our mind’s eye, and we use it to size up every father that we encounter. By that ideal, we will either criticize or praise the actions of any father.

Sure, there may be differences on the small stuff. Does your ideal father take you fishing or teach you philosophy? But when it comes to the essentials, we are all the same. It’s not like some kids prefer abusive fathers, while others appreciate caring fathers. And no children prefer to live with only one parent, or want to see their parents fighting constantly.

While a great many have needed to cope with divorced parents, nobody wants to. Fact is, every person who has ever been born in the world would like to have the father who conceived her, married to the mother who gave her birth, and living in a loving relationship in a happy home.

Not only is this the preference of everyone who has ever been born, it is also the best predicter of human thriving. More than wealth, more than health, more than social strata, more than level of education, more than any other factor, a stable and loving home is the most important factor in a happy life.

In one of his most passionate and inspiring speeches, President Barak Obama called on the 2013 graduating class of Morehouse College to step up to the plate and make this kind of fatherhood a reality for their own children.

He said, “When fathers are absent—when they abandon their responsibility to their kids—we know the damage that does to our families. Children who grow up without a father are more likely to drop out of school and wind up in prison. They’re more likely to have substance abuse problems, run away from home, and become teenage parents themselves.”

Fathers matter. Obama himself came from a broken home and was raised by his grandmother. He knows firsthand how a son wants his father. And even though he stood before the graduates of Moorehouse college about as successful as a politician can be, still he talks about giving his own daughters what he never had, but always wanted.

Some will say, “Kids are resilient. They can get along without a father.” Thanks be to God, that’s true. Kids can and do overcome grievous losses. But just because someone can overcome a loss does not make it right to take from them what is rightfully theirs.

Kids have a right to be raised by their mother and father. I’m not just making this up. It is so deeply imprinted on the human heart that we know it instinctively. This right isn’t given by government, it comes into existence by the very fact that every human being has one mother and one father before they are able to do anything at all to take care of themselves.

When you came into the world, your mother was there – she had to be. But there was no biological necessity for your father to be there. His care, while every bit as important as the mother’s, comes more from a conscious commitment than from biological ties.

Mothers rarely walk away from their children, but men do, way too often. Motherlessness is not a common problem, but fatherlessness is. That means that men as individuals need to be more conscious of their commitment. We need to understand just how important our presence is to the children that we father.

Father’s Day gives us an opportunity to recognize the immense public good that comes from fathers who create a stable and loving home for the children that they father. It also gives us an occasion to extol the public institution of marriage which provides a much needed cultural incentive for men to take up their responsibilities as fathers.

The government generally does not care about your feelings and your relationships. We don’t ask the courts to recognize our BFF, brotherly love, or dating relationships. Historically, there is only one kind of relationship that we solemnize before a judge. It’s the kind of relationship that brings children into the world. It is important to governments because, even though the government does not create the right of a child to be raised by her mother and father, it is the government’s job to protect that right.

The marriage of one man to one woman for one lifetime was never an arbitrary custom dreamed up by religious zealots. It is an institution found in every culture, every place, and every time because people the world over have understood the social value of men being fathers to their children.

The recent redefinition of marriage by the US Supreme Court is not helping children. It is not teaching our young men the importance of fatherhood. It is not valuing mothers by giving them the full support of our public laws to encourage the father of the baby to help her raise the child.

At some point in the future, people will look back at our generation and wonder how we could have been so blind. In the mean-time what shall we do?  You can start by celebrating Father’s Day. Think about the blessings you have received through your father. Call him, if you can, and thank him.

Doubtless, you can also think on his failures. Don’t let these thoughts consume you and poison your relationship with dad. But do teach other young men to avoid those faults. Tell them how important they can be in someone’s life. Let them know how satisfying and joyful it can be to be a real father.

While the government may have temporary amnesia about the meaning of marriage and fatherhood, it’s up to us to keep the vision alive. Let us all step up to support one another more strongly than ever before. Not only will it make for a stronger community, it also is your best way to help fulfill some child’s deepest desire.

Further Reading: National Review, The Kids Are Not Alright