Courts

Michigan Hospital Just Wants The Court To Respect Their Right To Not Treat Jesus' Children For Jesus' Sake

Love the sinner. Hate the sin. Refuse service to the patient. Give 'em bad bedside manner too.

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Jesus Last Supper

You didn’t invite any of your gay friends, did you?

Next to Miranda, the Hippocratic oath is one of those specialist chants the general public knows. You know the one, the “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” chant Christian Hospitals in Michigan have that prevents doctors from helping their patients if their pronouns don’t match up with what set of junk the doctor thinks is hidden behind their patient gown. They’re so adamant about it, they are prepared to go to court over the right to do outlandish things like treat their patients.

Christian Healthcare Centers has filed a lawsuit over Michigan law that provides civil-rights protections based on sexual orientation.

The faith-based medical organization said the law, upheld last month by the state Supreme Court, would force it to abandon religious beliefs in treating patients.

Christian Healthcare treats all patients but, for example, because of religious beliefs, it opposes hormone treatment for gender transition or use of pronouns that differ from a person’s biological sex, the lawsuit said.

The state law is “an imminent threat” to Christian Health Centers, based in Plainfield Township, just outside of Grand Rapids.

Hooo Noooo. The threat of passing Biochemistry or Gross Anatomy is one thing, but the “imminent threat” of being made to refer to some twenty-something as they or xe is too great of a burden to bear.

I like to call the tired reverse racism format folks are revamping to justify bigotry with religious belief the Pointing True Scotsman. It generally goes something like “I know you wanna go clear example of X is Y, but the real Y here are Z for non sequitur”. For example, I know they want you to think that Nazis + Nazi sympathizers are fascists, but the real fascists are the democrats for not letting Donald Trump violate clear federal laws about not stealing classified information. No seriously — this isn’t me straw manning.

Are the lawyers representing the hospital really that far off?

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“Under the guise of stopping discrimination, the law discriminates against religious organizations, requiring them to forfeit their religious character and hire people who do not share their faith,” attorney John Bursch of Washington, D.C.-based Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in the 73-page lawsuit.

Read otherwise: I know they want you to think that hospital workers discriminating against their patients based on gender and sex are violating civil rights, but the real civil rights discrimination is not letting doctors deadname their patients. Pushing the legal stuff aside, this is just bad bedside manner? Legal hat back on, what is the threshold here? At what point does religious belief — truly held faith or otherwise — just become a gotcha to circumvent whatever laws of the land are on the books. Does it stop at marriage?

I personally give it two years before Alito and Friends ™ rule against the constitutionality of music genres and public use of party games because it infringes on the right to practice in public.

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If only we had some little section of the Constitution that, either through language or jurisprudential history, set up some clear delineations for the degree to which religious practice and prejudice can be used to impact otherwise secular social concerns like medical procedures and coercing football teams into joining their coach for prayer at the 50 yard line. Alas.

Michigan Law Protecting LGBTQ Discriminates Against Religion-Based Medical Clinic, Lawsuit Says [M Live]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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