News Briefs

Washington D.C., Jun 2, 2017 / 11:02 am (CNA).- Vatican experts on human development and social issues challenged Catholics around the world this week to respond with openness and a willingness to confront global issues in a truly Catholic manner.

In … […]

Denver, Colo., Jun 2, 2017 / 02:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- This weekend, the Church celebrates Pentecost, one of the most important feast days of the year that concludes the Easter season and celebrates the beginning of the Church.  

Here’s wh… […]

Chicago, Ill., Jun 2, 2017 / 12:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Earlier this month, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) issued new standards that require its employees and potential foster parents to accept and encourage children who wish to alter their gender.

The new policies state that the department “will not tolerate exposing LGBTQ children and youth to staff/providers who are not supportive of children and youths’ right to self-determination of sexual/gender identity,” The Federalist reported earlier this week.

According to the standards, all children have a “right to self-determination of gender and sexual orientation” and to choose their “sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression” which should be viewed as “developmental milestones, not problematic behavior.”  

The role of social workers and foster parents is to “facilitate exploration of any LGBTQ matters through an affirming approach…by being open, non-judgmental, and empathic.”

The standards were created with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has long championed extreme LGBT and transgender ideology, and targets any staff, volunteers or potential foster parents who are not sufficiently “LGBTQ-affirming.” Non-compliant adults face either “discipline” or “discharge.”

Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Catholic Women’s Forum at The Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., criticized the new policies in an opinion piece in The Federalist last week, noting that the “fiat” to the new ideology now trumps biological facts.

“No matter that sexual difference is a scientific fact, or that billions of sane people across the world acknowledge it,” she said.

The standards also state that the agency will not contract with any private agencies unless their policies are “at least as extensive” as the department’s LGBTQ policies.

“…the state’s child welfare agency is a closed shop, populated with closed minds, and intends to keep it that way. No believers in the binary need apply,” Hasson said.

She also noted that because parents relinquish all responsibility and authority over their children when they are wards of the state, parents could not request that their child not receive transgender procedures. They would simply be informed if or when their child has started hormone therapy or other treatments.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Meg Kilgannon, executive director of the Fairfax, Virginia-based Concerned Parents and Educators, criticized the policy, saying that it is ultimately an “erasure of the human person.”

She noted that this policy illustrates deeper issues regarding transgenderism than the much-discussed “bathroom wars” that often make headlines.

“…when you really start to dig into this issue and you start to think about all of the ramifications that something like this means, you discover that gender identity compels speech” by coercing people to use compliant words and pronouns, she said.

“If a government entity is set to be the ultimate arbiter of someone’s truth, being or existence, then at what point do parents get left out of the equation?” Kilgannon asked.

Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled against a similarly coersive transgender policy – the Obama administration’s mandate that health professionals must carry out gender reassignment surgeries, even if they have medical or religious objections.

“The regulation not only forces healthcare professionals to violate their medical judgment, it requires them to violate their deeply held religious beliefs,” U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas said in a Dec. 31 decision granting a temporary injunction against the Obama administration.

“Tragically, the regulation would force them to violate those religious beliefs and perform harmful medical transition procedures or else suffer massive financial liability,” the judge added.

Many in the medical field have expressed serious concerns about encouraging transgenderism – particularly hormonal regimens and genital surgeries – in children.

In a paper entitled “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” , last updated in May 2017, The American College of Pediatricians said that to encourage a child into thinking that “a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse,” they added.  

Plastic surgeon Dr. Patrick Lappert said during a conference earlier this year that one of the biggest problems with transgender sex change surgeries is that they are permanent and irreversible in any meaningful way, Dr. Lappert said.

“…it’s a permanent, irreversible mutilation of the human person. And there’s no other word for it,” he said.  

“It results in permanent sterility. It’s a permanent dissolution of the unitive and the procreative functions. And even the unitive aspect of the sexual embrace is radically hindered if not utterly destroyed,” he said.

This is not the first time that the Illinois DCFS has introduced controversial LGBTQ policies. In 2011, they became the first state to force the Catholic Church out of adoption and foster care services for their refusal to place children with same-sex couples.

Currently, the DCFS is also embroiled in another controversy regarding the death of Semaj Crosby, a foster child under their care. It was announced Wednesday that current DCFS director George Sheldon has resigned in the face of the ethics probe. In the last five years, the DCFS has gone through eight directors or acting directors amid various failures in leadership, the Chicago Tribune reports.

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Baltimore, Md., Jun 1, 2017 / 10:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Maryland Catholic Conference has issued a statement of guiding principles for Catholics and state legislators to better encounter immigrants with compassion in both personal and political are… […]

Lansing, Mich., Jun 1, 2017 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic farmer Steve Tennes says the city of East Lansing, Mich. illegally barred his family-run farm from the city farmer’s market because of his family’s religious beliefs about marriage.

“We have attended the City of East Lansing Farmer’s Market for the past seven years. We have always lovingly provided everything we grow and make at our farm to customers of all beliefs and backgrounds,” Tennes’ Country Mill Farms said on its Facebook page May 31.

“We enjoyed a great working relationship with the City of East Lansing up until 2016 when city officials learned about our family’s religious beliefs that we stated on our Facebook page.”

The farm, based outside the city in Charlotte, Mich., charged that city officials’ new policy bars them from the market “solely because we publicly stated beliefs that they do not like.”

Tennes’ farm has filed a lawsuit against the city in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Michigan with the aid of the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, explained the complaint.

“This lawsuit simply asks the court to uphold that freedom for a Catholic farmer, who should be free to sell his produce without coercion, discrimination, or intimidation by the government because of his beliefs about marriage,” Tedesco said.

“The city must respect Steve’s constitutionally protected freedom to express his religious beliefs on social media sites without being forced to surrender his right to participate in the marketplace.”

The lawsuit charged that the city policy violated free speech, freedom of religion and equal protection. It asks the federal court to halt the policy and award nominal and compensatory damages.

The farm has hosted wedding ceremonies in its orchard, but reconsidered its policy last year. On Aug. 24, 2016, Tennes posted on the farm’s Facebook page saying that due to the owners’ personal religious beliefs any requests to celebrate he would refer any requests for a same-sex ceremony to another nearby orchard.

After an East Lansing official saw the post, officials told Country Mill Farms they did not want it to be present at the farmer’s market scheduled the following Sunday. According to the lawsuit, officials said that they had received complaints about Tennes’ post and that protests against the market would occur. They urged the farm to withdraw from the market immediately.

Tennes nonetheless took his farm’s produce to the market. There were no protests.

Another Facebook post in December 2016 said that wedding ceremonies would resume at the farm’s orchard, explaining: “It remains our deeply held religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and Country Mill has the First Amendment Right to express and act upon its beliefs. For this reason, Country Mill reserves the right to deny a request for services that would require it to communicate, engage in, or host expression that violates the owners’ sincerely held religious beliefs and conscience.”

The message also said its religious beliefs include that all people should be treated with respect and dignity.

That post caused East Lansing officials to think Tennes’ views conflicted with the city’s view of marriage and sexual orientation, expressed in its Human Relations Ordinance. The ordinance could not be enforced against the farms. According to Alliance Defending Freedom, officials then made a new policy requiring vendors to comply with the ordinance and anti-discrimination policy “while at the market and as a general business practice.”

The new policy bars making a statement that “indicates that an individual’s patronage or presence at a place of public accommodation” is “unwelcome or acceptable” for certain classes, including sexual orientation or gender identity.

When Country Mill Farms applied to participate in the 2017 farmer’s market, a city official sent a letter telling Tennes that he was prohibited from participating because he was not in compliance with the new policy. It included an attachment of his December Facebook post.

In a May 31 statement responding to the lawsuit, the City of East Lansing said Country Mill Farms “advertised that their business practice is to prohibit same-sex couples from holding weddings at their orchard,” in violation of the city policy.

“Their business practices violate the City of East Lansing’s long-standing ordinance that protects sexual orientation as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling that grants the right for same-sex couples to be married,” the city claimed.

Alliance Defending Freedom charged that the new policy exceeded the city’s jurisdiction and did not define “discrimination” or any key terms relevant for enforcement.

“All Steve wants to do is sell his food to anyone who wants to buy it, but the city isn’t letting him,” said Kate Anderson, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom.

“People of faith, like the Tennes family, should be free to live and work according to their deeply held beliefs without fear of losing their livelihood. If the government can shut down a family farmer just because of the religious views he expresses on Facebook – by denying him a license to do business and serve fresh produce to all people – then no American is free.”

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