A strange jurist
Leftist blindness and lack of principles on clear display. And it's on SCOTUS!
Supreme Court justices return to work next month following a tumultuous last session in which the majority issued some controversial rulings, most notably the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Liberals in general, and Justice Elena Kagan in particular, are upset by the decisions of the conservative majority.
Kagan recently spoke at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. She said: “When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem.”
As conservatives see it, what Kagan objects to is precisely what liberal judges have been doing for more than half a century. Conservatives have seen the court as too often making law from the bench that has little or nothing to do with the Constitution, only what the justices think it ought to say and would have said had they written it.
Former President Barack Obama once revealed the objective of many liberals. During an interview in 2001 he seemed to disparage the Constitution as merely “a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”
In fact, the Constitution limits the power of the federal government to preserve and protect individual liberty. That’s why the Preamble begins “We the people of the United States” not “You the government.”
The late Justice Antonin Scalia was on point when he said: “As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to ‘do what the people want,’ instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.”
Following criticism by then-President Donald Trump about judges who reflect the ideology of the presidents who appoint them, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement in rebuttal: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
If that were true, there would be no dissents and all judges would have the same view of the Constitution, but clearly in modern times they reflect the view of law of the Democratic presidents who nominate them. That is not always so with Republican presidents.
Earl Warren, John Paul Stevens, Harry Blackmun, Warren Burger, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, and Anthony Kennedy were all named by Republican presidents and to one degree or another (some more than others) voted in ways, from abortion to same-sex marriage, that delighted Democrats.
So far as I can tell, only one judge named by a modern Democrat did not completely reflect the views of the president who nominated him. That was John F. Kennedy’s pick of Justice Byron White, who was in the 7-2 minority when Roe was decided in 1973.
If there are no Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump, and Biden judges, how else could they be described?
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/27/looks-whos-talking-justice-kagan
***********************************************Persecuting Christians who refuse to do work for same-sex weddings is nothing less than bigotry
Emilee Carpenter is a gifted photographer whose lavish images celebrate all kinds of people — Christian, Jewish, black, white, straight, gay and everything in between. She aims her lens at clients without fear or prejudice — with one notable exception.
She refuses to take pictures of same-sex weddings. That’s non-negotiable. And it could cost her — big time.
“I serve everyone, including those who identify as LGBT. But I now face threats of up to $100,000 in fines, a revoked business license and even jail time simply because of my Christian beliefs about marriage,’’ Carpenter, who lives and works near upstate Elmira, said this week.
“The government shouldn’t banish people from the marketplace because of their faith,’’ she continued. “Free speech is for everyone, not just those who happen to agree with the government.”
The state of New York would differ.
Carpenter is in the vortex in which a professional’s deeply held religious belief that holy matrimony is the union of one man and one woman is being attacked as a hate crime.
Carpenter has declined requests by same-sex couples to document their weddings. So she researched potential penalties — hefty fines, revocation of her business license, even up to a year behind bars — and freaked out. In April 2021, she sued New York, claiming its human-rights law forcing her to shoot same-sex marriages ran afoul of her First Amendment rights to free speech, free association and free religious expression, and violated the establishment clause and her right to due process.
In December, a district court judge dismissed the case. This delighted state Attorney General Letitia James, who is named in the suit — Emilee Carpenter Photography v. James. The AG called it “a huge victory in our pursuit to ensure that every New Yorker has equal access and equal protections under the law.’’
“Love is love,’’ James’ statement also said, “which is why my office will always fight to ensure that all New Yorkers are treated equally under the law.”
Except, apparently, Christians. Their beliefs are anathema to the woke social order.
On Wednesday, the case got another look, as oral arguments were held in the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan. The three-judge panel grilled a lawyer for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom group, which represents Carpenter, as well as a rep for the state Human Rights Commission and the upstate Chemung County Attorney.
Bryan Neihart of ADF argued that the Constitutional right to free expression must shield an artist such as Carpenter from being compelled to go against her values. The same would go for a tattoo artist whose work only celebrates Islam. Or for such creators as florists and calligraphers, Neihart said. The judges will rule at a later date.
The case recalls the ordeal of Cynthia and Robert Gifford, Christians who declined to hold a wedding ceremony for two lesbians at their upstate New York Liberty Ridge Farm back in 2012. (A reception would have been OK). As I reported, they were fined $13,000 by an administrative law judge — $1,500 to compensate each member of the couple for “mental anguish’’ and $10,000 to be poured into the black hole of state government. The couple’s appeal failed, and they gave up and took the financial hit that greatly harmed their family business.
But Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado, whose Christian owner, Jack Phillips, refused to create a custom wedding cake for a couple of gay men — but has said he’d gladly make anyone a birthday cake or shower cake, cookies or brownies — has been caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare.
In 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled by a 7-2 vote that Phillips did not violate the state’s anti-discrimination law. But the harassment of the religious baker continues to this day.
Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission filed another complaint against Phillips’ bakery, on behalf of transgender activist Autumn Scardina after the cake-maker declined to create a birthday cake that’s blue on the outside and pink on the inside to symbolize Scardina’s transition from male to female. Phillips countersued, claiming, justifiably, that he was being singled out for his religious beliefs. In early 2019, both parties dropped their cases.
But the activist continued the anti-religious crusade, filing separate litigation against Phillips’ bakeshop in District Court. Last year, a judge ruled in favor of the trans woman. That case is on appeal.
Readers know I support same-sex unions, as do a majority of Americans. But the persecution of people of faith should frighten us all, regardless of sexual orientation.
This is just another form of bigotry.
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Unions Bleed After Top Court's OK of Membership Opt-Out
The nation's four largest government unions lost more than 200,000 members after the Supreme Court ruled that public sector workers could opt out of union membership, according to a report released Wednesday.
In the four years since the landmark Janus v. AFSCME ruling, the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Service Employees International Union, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees lost almost 219,000 union members. The report, published by the Commonwealth Foundation, found that the Supreme Court decision escalated a decades-long decline in dues-paying members at the public sector unions.
Despite the drop in membership, labor groups have scored legal and political victories that are buoying their political power. Union bosses scored a major victory last year in Virginia, where they attained collective bargaining rights for government workers for the first time through the then-Democratic-controlled state house. The Missouri Supreme Court last year voided a law that would have required unions to have regular recertification votes and annual reports on political activity. Colorado, meanwhile, passed a law in 2020 that unionized its 30,000 state government employees.
Overall, the Commonwealth Foundation downgraded five states in their annual report card, which measures workers' freedoms across the country. Jennifer Stefano, vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, said the report shows there is still much progress to be made on expanding workers' rights—even as unions lose members.
"Government unions continue to exert undue influence on policymakers, advancing controversial causes counter to the interests and beliefs of their membership, while creating barriers that prevent civil servants from making their own decision about whether or not to associate with unions," Stefano told the Washington Free Beacon.
The decline in union membership comes as Democrats in Congress push for the PRO Act, which would limit employment for independent contractors and put an end to "right-to-work" laws in 28 states that ban union membership as a term of employment. The bill, which passed in the House, is supported by President Joe Biden, who refers to himself as the "most pro-union president" in history.
The top government unions have made passage of the PRO Act a top priority: The NEA, AFT, and AFSCME were the top three public political spending unions in the 2020 election—totaling $80 million that overwhelmingly went to Democratic candidates and groups.
AFSCME lost a total of 15,562 union members since the Janus decision. The NEA lost 84,980, SEIU lost 78,295, and AFT lost 39,773. The unions also had a significant number of members opt out of paid dues, as they lost 379,184 fee payers in total.
Rebecca Friedrichs, a public school teacher who challenged mandatory union membership at the Supreme Court in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, said workers will continue to opt out of membership as they learn more about their rights.
"I was abused by my unions for 28 years, while they pilfered money from my paychecks and picked on me for putting my students ahead of union politics," Friedrichs told the Free Beacon. "In every major decision the union faced in my career, they prioritized adults over children and valued their own pocketbooks more than the best interests of teachers."
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How 1 Small European Study Changed Transgender Medicine in US
Excerpts from an interview
So I just want to underscore that what is being called crucial is actually based on the results of one very small study that was done years ago in the Netherlands. And I will explain what that study is about, but I first want to emphasize that the Dutch Protocol is the foundation of the type of care that doctors like myself, therapists, endocrinologists, who prescribe hormones, surgeons, and so on are being told is the way to approach these children, gender-affirming care.
Now, what happened in the Netherlands years ago was that, until the ’90s, the only people that would transition to live as the opposite sex with hormones and surgery were adults. And almost only, I mean, the vast majority were men. And the results for those men were not so good.
The cosmetic results were not good. And that is because they had already gone through male puberty. And so they had been masculinized by the testosterone that surges during male puberty and beyond. And so they had many features that made it difficult for them to appear feminine, as a female. And their mental health, after transition, was found to not be so good. And there were still high suicide rates in that population.
So in Holland, a group of doctors had the idea that if we could intervene in these people’s lives before puberty, and we could prevent the masculinization and feminization that happens during puberty—I mean, when you think about it, you think of someone who hasn’t gone through puberty, they’re a child. They don’t appear masculine or feminine, really. They could really present as either. They’re androgynous in a way.
So it’s only with the onset of puberty and the changes that occur, the breast growth and fat redistribution and facial hair and all the other things that happen, that it becomes more clear when we look at somebody whether they are male or female.
So these Dutch doctors wanted to find a way to identify those kids who were most likely to persist with their gender dysphoria for the rest of their lives, which is not an easy thing. In fact, it’s impossible.
You see, we can’t predict who’s going to persist with the gender dysphoria and who will get through it and will, after a number of years, reach a point of being comfortable with one’s biology, with one’s body. And that is called desistance.
So the kids whose gender dysphoria doesn’t last, they’re called desisters. And those for whom it does last, they’re called people who persist. So those are the terms that we use.
So the Dutch group tried, and we cannot—oh, what I meant to say, Katrina, is that we have no way of predicting which kids are going to fall into what category. But, I mean, we have at least 11 studies that conclusively tell us that the vast majority of kids do desist as they get into puberty and go through puberty and become adults.
Trinko: So for most of them, it’s not a permanent thing.
Grossman: Correct. And I’m talking about huge numbers here, depending on the study, between 60% to 90% … of these kids. So this is a very tricky thing. We don’t know which kids are going to persist and which kids are not.
But the majority of them, well, at least in the little kids, we have a new population now of the teenagers, but at least in the little kids, we know that chances are good, if not very good, that they will not persist. Many of them end up to be gay and lesbian, but they are comfortable and at peace with their physical bodies.
So the Dutch got together 55 kids who they thought probably a good chance that they will persist with their gender dysphoria their entire lives. And these were, again, kids who started complaining about their sex and not wanting to be their sex, or insisting that they were the opposite sex at a young age, 4, 6 years old, little kids. And then they persisted with that for a number of years. It didn’t come and go. It was persistent and they were insistent of this situation.
So what they did is they took a medication that we now call puberty blockers. They were not invented to block puberty. They were invented—well, they were used for different conditions. One is called precocious puberty. So precocious puberty, it’s also a rare condition, in which kids, boys and girls, they enter puberty way too early.
Trinko: Oh.
Grossman: I mean—
Trinko: Talk about a nightmare.
Grossman: Yeah. It is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare. Girls, 6, 7 years old begin to develop breasts.
Trinko: Oh, poor kids.
Grossman: So the treatment for those kids is very often to give them medications that will stop that. I mean, these kids, though, you can do laboratory work and discover that they actually have a medical condition. They have elevated levels of the hormones that shouldn’t be elevated at that time in their life. So we treat them for a few years with blockers, they’re now called blockers. And then when they’re 11, 12 years old, those medications are stopped, and they do go into regular puberty.
Trinko: So I’m guessing the kids in the Dutch study were not going through premature puberty.
Grossman: Correct, correct. They had gender dysphoria. Now, this was the first time that puberty blockers were being used in this context. They’re also used in other conditions. They’re used with prostate cancer, endometriosis. They’re used in sex offenders, because they block testosterone and testosterone increases sex drive. So they’re used in people who might be incarcerated or have really gotten into trouble with their urges.
Trinko: So what were the outcomes of these 55 kids who were put on puberty blockers?
Grossman: It’s a complicated subject, but for the purposes of our discussion, I’ll just say that they followed these kids for a year and a half after surgery. A year and a half is a very short time.
Trinko: Right, for the rest of your life.
Grossman: They did discover, though, that after a year and a half—oh, wait, I didn’t say something very important. So, two main things. First, that these kids developed gender dysphoria at an early age. And second is that if they had any significant mental health issues, they were disqualified.
Trinko: Got it. So that would be anything beyond gender dysphoria, OCD, depression. I don’t know all the kids’ mental health issues.
Grossman: Well, right now kids with gender dysphoria are presenting with many, many mental health—many of them are on the autism spectrum. They have anxiety disorder, depression, OCD, eating disorders, self-injury.
There’s many different issues that they struggle with.
Trinko: So these kids in the Dutch study, no other existing issues.
Grossman: Right. They were excluded if they had significant psychiatric comorbidities. That was an exclusionary point. So they were psychologically, generally, healthy kids, but they had gender dysphoria from an early age.
So they got 55 of these kids and they put them through this protocol. And they found that a year and a half, they were still very young, I think they were still, maybe 20, 21 at the oldest, and they were in general doing well. And they had less gender dysphoria.
So now there are many issues that I’m not going to go into here with the problems related to this Dutch study. I mentioned one just a minute ago, which is that the follow-up was so short. We now know that regret with undergoing medical and surgical transition takes a long time. It can take up to eight or 10 years to experience that regret, No. 1, and then to process it and accept it internally to the point of being able to admit it. And then you have to admit it not only to yourself, but to others.
So that is a very complicated process, because you have to imagine here that these young people have, over the years, everyone in their lives, their families and their friends and their connections, they’ve all told them, “This is my identity. I have a new identity. I’m not male. I’m female. This is my new name. These are my pronouns. I’m sure. I’m 100%. This is who I am. Don’t challenge me. I know who I am.”
And then after years, and after these huge decisions that they’ve gone through, and perhaps their families may not have been 100% on board and they may have alienated their relationships within their families—this is a very complex thing.
Trinko: You mentioned in your talk, I believe, correct me if I got this wrong, that part of the problem with American doctors relying on this study was these kids didn’t have coexisting mental issues or comorbidities. And today in America, most kids with gender dysphoria do, so the study doesn’t really seem applicable. Is that correct?
Grossman: That’s correct. What I’m saying is that the current population, you have to compare apples and apples. This is not apples and apples. This explosion of young people right now who are clamoring for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and surgeries are a completely different population than those kids that were part of the Dutch study.
You see, what’s going on in gender-affirming care is that the parents are actually being dismissed. Parents come into a therapist and say, “Wait a minute. What’s going on? Our child is autistic,” or, “Our child is being treated for autism. Our child was sexually molested a few years ago.” We need to look into all that stuff before we automatically say, “Oh, yeah, you’re a boy. Change your name, change your pronouns, put you on testosterone.”
And what’s happening, and I’m hearing this a lot from parents, is that the therapists will say, “If you don’t accept that you now have a son and not a daughter, you are the problem right now. And your lack of acceptance is going to increase the chance of your daughter ending her life.” So that’s a whole other discussion—
Trinko: The threat, yeah.
Grossman: … is the suicide thing. And maybe we can do that another time, because I know we don’t have much time.
But what I’m saying is that parents should not allow therapists to throw them under the bus. We’re talking about loving, devoted parents who from Day One, from the moment they found out they were pregnant or the moment they signed the adoption papers, are 100% devoted to this child and doing everything and more for this child. So it makes me very angry when I hear about therapists who throw these parents under the business and tell them that they’re the problem.
The parents are not the problem. The parents have very good reason to be concerned about what’s going on and to want to take it slowly and carefully and address all the other mental health issues that are going on first.
So there are a lot of websites. Let me just mention a few of them. I won’t be able to mention all of them, but first of all, I’ll mention my website, which is miriamgrossmanmd.com. And I have articles and videos. I wrote an important article for The Daily Wire going through the medical consequences of transitioning. It is behind a paywall, but it’s very thorough. And I think that it’s must reading for parents.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/30/how-1-small-european-study-changed-transgender-medicine-in-us
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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