Churches Sue Massachusetts Over Gender Identity Law

Four Massachusetts churches are filing for an injunction against the state’s Commission Against Discrimination, claiming in legal briefs that the state’s choice to include “gender identity” in their anti-discrimination law was infringing on their First Amendment freedoms.

Horizon Christian Fellowship, Swansea Abundant Life Assembly of God, House of Destiny Ministries and Faith Christian Fellowship took legal action this week after Attorney General Maura Healey and the state commissioners said that churches would not be exempt from rules giving transgender citizens special protection under the law.

“Under [the law] places of public accommodation may not discriminate against, or restrict a person from services because of that person’s gender identity. For example, a hotel or motel may not refuse to book a room for a person because of the person’s gender identity,” said the state. “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

This definition, say the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, puts too much power in the hands of the state and encroaches on the rights of believers.

“The government shouldn’t encroach on the internal, religious practices of a church,” said Steve O’Ban of the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Neither the commission nor the attorney general has the constitutional authority to dictate how any church uses its facility or what public statements a church can make concerning a deeply held religious belief, such as on human sexuality.”

If the suit is unsuccessful, churches could be required to use the chosen pronouns of a transgendered individual, regardless of whether those pronouns match the individual’s biological sex.

“The government has no compelling interests – unrelated to the suppression of ideas – that is served by infringing the churches’ and pastors’ expressive associational rights, nor can any such interest be achieved by the least restrictive means available,” said the churches in the filing.

How is it that the LGBT community in this country – the champions of the so-called “safe space” – don’t believe that anyone should be able to disagree with them, anywhere, at any time? Why does everyone have to be on board? Why do they have to enforce this with legal mandates? What happened to the original goal, which was to just let everyone do their own thing?

For years, the LGBT leftists ripped Christian America as a fascist, intolerant clique. Now, with the social winds at their backs, they are proving day by day that they were never interested in “tolerance.” They simply wanted to destroy one social order and replace it with a new one.

And they’re rapidly doing just that.