Our Nemesis Is Back In The News

The organization which is called by the Southern Poverty Law Canter a hate group is back in the news, they are representing a professor from Shawnee State University who misgenders and refuses to proper pronouns when addressing a trans person.

Ohio professor who rejected transgender pronouns can sue university: U.S. appeals court
Reuters
By Jonathan Stempel
March 26, 2021


A federal appeals court on Friday revived a philosophy professor’s lawsuit against a public university in southern Ohio that reprimanded him for refusing to address a transgender student by her preferred pronouns.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Nicholas Meriwether can try to prove Shawnee State University violated his First Amendment free speech and religious rights by mandating pronouns that he said did not reflect “biological reality” and contradicted his devout Christian beliefs.

Shawnee State had given Meriwether, who had taught there since 1996, a written warning about his conduct, and said he could be suspended without pay or fired for violating its nondiscrimination policy.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the professor and Pink News had this to say about the law firm…

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a hardline evangelical group which has filed countless lawsuits seeking to undermine and roll back LGBT+ rights, had launched action against the state of Connecticut in February over trans-inclusive rules for high school sports.

However, the case being heard before US district judge Robert N Chatigny has turned extremely ugly – after ADF’s lawyers insisted on repeatedly misgendering transgender children.

The judge had requested that the lawyers use correct terminology after they referred to trans students intervening the suit as “boys” and “males”, with Chatingy urging them to avoid “needlessly provocative” language and maintain “respectful, humane, intelligent, civil discourse”.

Why did the Southern Poverty Law Center label them a “hate group?”

The SPLC lists ADF as a hate group because it has supported the idea that being LGBTQ+ should be a crime in the U.S. and abroad and believes that is OK to put LGBTQ+ people in prison for engaging in consensual sex. It has also supported laws that required the forced sterilization of transgender Europeans.

ADF has spread lies about the LGBTQ+ community. It has, for example, linked being LGBTQ+ to pedophilia and claimed that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy society. ADF tries to couch its rhetoric in benign-sounding phrases, but the truth is that it works to dehumanize LGBTQ+ people and restrict their rights for being who they are.

And this is the law firm representing the professor, you know that this case is going to the Supreme Court because that is what ADF does… try to make precedence setting cases. Also the Alliance Defending Freedom helped Trump pick judges to be nominated to the federal courts, including Supreme Court judges.

Trump's Supreme Court front-runners 'antithetical' to Ginsburg's legacy, critics say
Donald Trump has vowed to choose a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but LGBTQ and civil rights activists say those on his list could undo her legacy.
NBC News
By Julie Moreau
September 22, 2020


The women on President Donald Trump's shortlist to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court do not reflect Ginsburg’s legacy and could undo key civil rights victories she backed during her 27 years on the court, LGBTQ and civil rights advocates warn.
[…]
Rushing garnered attention at her confirmation for her association with Alliance Defending Freedom, where she interned as a law student in 2005, writing briefs defending ADF positions. She later spoke at ADF events at least once a year from 2012 to 2017.

Do you think when the case gets to the Supreme Court that Justice Barrett will recuse herself?

I don't.

And lost in all this legal wrangling are the students that he is misgendering and deadnaming are the students and the harm that are experiencing by the professor.