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Pushback: Catholics sue Michigan for imposing queers and the queer agenda in religious schools

Repealed in Michigan
Doesn’t exist any longer in Michigan

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A century-old Catholic parish based in Grand Rapids, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, is suing Michigan preemptively, anticipating that the state will soon require it to hire queers as well as teach the queer agenda in its school, based on the state’s very broad Civil Rights Act that forbids any discrimination based on sex.

The Michigan Supreme Court recently reinterpreted the prohibition on sex discrimination in Michigan’s Civil Rights Act and penal code to include sexual orientation and gender identity. That change requires Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish and its school, Sacred Heart Academy, to hire faculty and staff who lead lives in direct opposition to the Catholic faith, speak messages that violate Church doctrine, and refrain from articulating Catholic beliefs in teaching its students and when advertising the school to prospective students or job applicants.

Additionally, by preventing Sacred Heart from operating its school consistent with its beliefs, state officials are violating the rights of parents—including the three families who have joined the lawsuit—who specifically chose to send their children to Sacred Heart Academy because the school aligns with their values and religious beliefs.

You can read the lawsuit here [pdf]. It notes in detail the hostility to the Catholic Church by the Attorney General of Michigan, Democrat Dana Nessel, who appears eager to use the law to deny all Catholics their first amendment rights.

Sacred Heart also fears aggressive government enforcement because Defendant Nessel has made public comments hostile to the Catholic faith and because the school’s faith-based approach to education makes it a target for those who disagree with its religious worldview.

Defendant Nessel has already been faulted by this Court for acting without neutrality toward religious actors in another case. [She] campaigned on the principle that the Catholic Church’s beliefs and practices about marriage constitute “hate,” and that a Michigan law protecting the religious liberty rights of adoption and foster agencies is “discriminatory animus.”

After taking office, Defendant Nessel settled a case for the purpose of nullifying that duly enacted law while supporting termination of Catholic adoption and foster agencies in a manner that the district court found to be a “pretext for religious targeting.” [She] has referred to Catholic adoption agencies as “hate mongers,” smeared Catholics with a snide remark about “their rosary,” and maligned a respected former Michigan Court of Appeals Judge simply because he is Catholic.

Based on the law and the known hostility of Nessel, the lawsuit requests that the portion of the Michigan Civil Rights Act that attempts to impose the queer agenda on traditional religious schools and the Catholic families who wish to send their kids there be declared unconstitutional, as a violation of their first and fourteenth amendment rights.

In a different world that once existed in America, a victory in this lawsuit would be a slam dunk. The America that is now gone would have considered it insane to insist that a Catholic school hire queers, and then be forbidden from stopping those queers from indoctrinating Catholic children to the queer agenda, in school. Free Americans would have demanded that the queers be allowed to live their own lives, but not impose those lives forcibly on others. The gay community itself would have once agreed, understanding that to impose itself on others who disagree would make it no different than the bigots who once oppressed homosexuals.

Unfortunately however, insanity now rules, and this case is not a slam dunk. We can no longer rely on the courts to rule in favor of free speech and religious freedom. The intolerant culture that now rules America is going to demand the imposition of queerness on this Catholic institution, with the hope that either it will bow its head and obey, or it will shut down. If either happens, that intolerant culture will achieve what it considers to be a victory, the silencing of free thought and the squelching western civilization’s five hundred year tradition of liberty of conscience.

Kudos however to these Catholics. They appear willing to fight. If they lose in court, however, will they be willing to go to jail in defense of their religious beliefs? The time is coming when they might have to.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Cotour

    Catholics / Christians in particular are the main problem that the Democrat now Nazi party has.

    Why? Because they stand squarely in opposition to most every one of their very strange and almost uber Libertarian on steroids agenda.

    The Christian represents existential threats to their world and their America transforming agenda. And they are true believers.

    Remember, those who burned witches alive in Salem truly believed they were burning witches and they were doing what needed to be done. They took care of business.

    The Democrat party true believers are exactly the same as the Salem witch burners and they will do whatever they determine is necessary to achieve what must be achieved. Up to and including murder.

    And you can take that to the bank.

    And there is only one way to fight such a political war, and that is ruthlessly and competently.

    And that is where the Republican party fails miserably. Between their own group incompetence and the RINO’s within they and we as a country at this point in time do not have a chance.

    The ONLY solution? Very strong, competent, unambiguous LEADERSHIP.

    And that position now remains up in the air, but it is what is desperately needed.

  • Sippin_bourbon

    Precedent is on the side of the school. Cases in many states and a few federal favor the school in hiring/firing practices.

    Teachers fired for single motherhood pregnancy or coming out gay/lesbian have al been upheld in court. The private school system has broader leeway on this.

    That does not mean that the left will not keep trying.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “ The America that is now gone would have considered it insane to insist that a Catholic school hire queers, and then be forbidden from stopping those queers from indoctrinating Catholic children to the queer agenda, in school. Free Americans would have demanded that the queers be allowed to live their own lives, but not impose those lives forcibly on others. The gay community itself would have once agreed, understanding that to impose itself on others who disagree would make it no different than the bigots who once oppressed homosexuals.

    Whether you believe that the transformation began with Obama’s promise, the Fabians, the wrong side winning the Whiskey Rebellion, or some other person, group, or event, most of what Robert misses and most of what he complains about changed with Obama’s election in 2008, the most important election in our lifetimes. There was a time when homosexuals only asked for acknowledgement, but now they demand participation, and for some reason there are now an uncountable number of “genders” and corresponding bizarre pronouns. Before Obama, religion was protected, but now it is scorned, snubbed, and shunned. Before Obama, it was unthinkable that government would take sides in politics, which the Hatch Act is supposed to prevent. Before Obama, it was unthinkable that government would allow criminals to be set free to continue their crime sprees. Before Obama, how many train robberies were there, and now they occur continually in Los Angeles. Before Obama, it was unthinkable that violent protesters would burn sections of cities for an entire summer as their police departments ordered their officers to let it happen.

    Welcome to Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, land of the formerly free.

  • Cotour

    AMERICAS TRAJECTORY

    With the very questionable arbitrary, illegal in many instances changes of voting and election rules primarily instituted by the several Democrat controlled legislatures during Covid. Was Covid an accident or a timely opportunity? A little too timely for me.

    That and the clearly manipulated razor thin results in many key American elections that are being revealed through the Twitter files and the collusion between the Leftist “Progressive” aligned Twitter employees and the government agents of the FBI (D). It is only a matter of time before the same result will take place in America as is now playing out in Brazil.

    The Leftists among us (D) are very effective in their efforts to turn the free world into Socialist “Utopias”, just like Cuba, Venezuela and now Brazil. America is not far behind.

    Bolsonaro Rules Out Military Intervention in Brazil, “I Have No Support from Other Institutions to Act Against Lula!”
    None of what you are witness to in either Brazil or in American elections is by accident IMO, and these are not coincidences.

    Are you paying attention yet?

    https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.a5384303cb34c174fe870f6011e3314b?rik=eB882QmttAWjow&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.thefamouspeople.com%2fprofiles%2fimages%2fkarl-marx-31.jpg&ehk=vit3oKdA%2fhf8BnseVHgYX%2fV%2ba3mMXmwUhxBSOhPGokI%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0

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