The federal Supreme Court
came to the right conclusion in its majority opinion for United
States v Skrmetti, which involved Tennessee’s law banning trans drugs
and surgeries for minors. However, as we
have seen in other cases, there are worrisome elements in the majority’s ruling
that complicate what is otherwise a reason for celebration.
We begin with Chief Justice
Roberts’s (who penned the ruling for the majority) bizarre attempt to sunder
and separate pregnancy from womanhood:
‘In Geduldig v. Aiello,
417 U. S. 484 (1974), for example, we held that a California insurance program
that excluded from coverage certain disabilities resulting from pregnancy did
not discriminate on the basis of sex. See id., at 486, 492–497. In
reaching that holding, we explained that the program did not exclude any
individual from benefit eligibility because of the individual’s sex but rather
“remove[d] one physical condition—pregnancy—from the list of compensable
disabilities.” Id., at 496, n. 20. We observed that the “lack of
identity” between sex and the excluded pregnancy-related disabilities became
“clear upon the most cursory analysis.” Id., at 497, n. 20. The
California insurance program, we explained, divided potential recipients into
two groups: “pregnant women and nonpregnant persons.” Ibid. Because
women fell into both groups, the program did not discriminate against women as
a class. See id., at 496, and n. 20. We thus concluded that, even though
only biological women can become pregnant, not every legislative
classification concerning pregnancy is a sex-based classification.’
Pregnancy is a ‘physical
condition’ that can somehow become detached from ‘sex-based
classification.’ He even throws in a
nonsense term like ‘nonpregnant persons.’
This kind of language and reasoning is not all that different from the
hard Left’s use of inclusive terminology like ‘birthing persons.’ The Chief Justice is potentially opening the
door for future sexual confusion and federal judicial mischief by abstracting
what clearly pertains to one sex, pregnancy, from that particular sex, from
women.
Such concerns are not merely
speculative. Justice Sotomayor in her
dissent details how the federal Supreme Court, through its redefinition of
words, norms, etc., has re-shaped the culture of the States in recent years:
‘Indeed, judicial scrutiny
has long played an essential role in guarding against legislative efforts to
impose upon individuals the State’s views about how people of a particular sex
(or race) should live or look or act. Women, it was once thought, were not
suited to attend military schools with men. Virginia, 518 U. S., at
520–523, 540–541. Men and women, others said, should not marry those of a
different race. Loving, 388 U. S., at 4. Those laws, too, posed politically
fraught and contested questions about race, sex, and biology. In a passage that
sounds hauntingly familiar to readers of Tennessee’s brief, Virginia argued in Loving
that, should this Court intervene, it would find itself in a “bog of
conflicting scientific opinion upon the effects of interracial marriage, and
the desirability of preventing such alliances, from the physical, biological,
genetic, anthropological, cultural, psychological, and sociological point of
view.” Brief for Appellee in Loving v. Virginia, O. T. 1966, No.
395, p. 7. “In such a situation,” Virginia continued, “it is the exclusive
province of the Legislature of each State to make the determination for its
citizens as to the desirability of a policy of permitting or preventing such
[interracial] alliances—a province which the judiciary may not constitutionally
invade.” Id., at 7–8.
‘This Court, famously,
rejected the States’ invitation in Loving to “defer to the wisdom of the
state legislature” based on assertions that “the scientific evidence is substantially
in doubt.” 388 U. S., at 8. In considering the constitutionality of Virginia’s
male-only military academy, too, the Court itself assessed the “opinions of
Virginia’s expert witnesses” that “‘[m]ales tend to need an atmosphere of adversativeness,’”
while “‘[f]emales tend to thrive in a cooperative atmosphere.’”’
The current makeup of the
federal Supreme Court does not inspire confidence that it will resist the
temptation to further engage in social engineering. Justice Gorsuch gave us the awful Bostock
decision; Chief Justice Roberts has taken on the role of moderate swing vote;
and Justice Barrett is looking unreliable as well:
‘The data is out and it looks
like MAGA was right about Justice Amy Coney Barrett
‘She’s a backstabber to the
people who appointed her
‘The records show her
agreeing with liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan 82% of the time
during her 2nd term, up from 39% in her 1st’ (‘The data doesn’t lie — Amy Coney
Barrett is a bigger backstabber than we realized…,’ DC Draino via revolver.news).
The worst part of the
majority’s ruling, however, is its lack of any solid principles upon which they
ground it. Due to the uncertainty of
‘the science’ surrounding trans procedures for minors, they simply defer to the
elected officials of the States. This is
dangerous territory, for scientific procedures could one day become advanced
enough to manipulate even the genes involved in sex determination. We have nearly reached the point where two
men can have children without a woman donating an egg:
‘New research from Oregon
Health & Science University describes the science behind a promising
technique to treat infertility by turning a skin cell into an egg that is
capable of producing viable embryos.
‘ . . . The technique could
be used by women of advanced maternal age or those who are unable to produce
viable eggs due to previous treatment for cancer or other causes. It also
raises the possibility of men in same-sex relationships having children who are
genetically related to both parents’ (Erik Robinson, ‘Research sheds light on
new strategy to treat infertility,’ ohsu.edu).
More to the point, scientists
have been able to use CRISPR to manipulate the sex of mice (here
and here)
and crustaceans.
When (probably not if)
scientists are able to completely transition a man to a woman or a girl to a
boy without physical harm, what will stand in the way of the federal Supreme
Court from pronouncing that it is ‘invidious sex discrimination’ (to use Chief
Justice Roberts’s words) to deny minors or anyone else access to transgender
care? The justices will have no defense;
by the rules the majority is using (the uncertainty of the science, the
inability to identify transgender individuals as a distinct class of people),
they would have to acquiesce to the trans cult and strike down laws that
prevent minors from transitioning.
Unless they change their
approach. While atheistic natural
science has been placed at the top of the epistemological hierarchy in recent
years, there is actually a higher level of knowledge and authority: divinely revealed and established truth. Until recent years, the latter has always
been the lodestar of the South. Richard
Weaver explains:
. . .
The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/06/garlington-a-temporary-victory-against-trans-rights/.
***
Many thanks to the Ludwell
Orthodox Fellowship for running the essay, ‘The Battles of Kosovo and Chancellorsville: An Interpretation of Southern Religious
History’:
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
