Penna Dexter
The House of Representatives Committee on Reform and Oversight held a hearing recently on what members called “the administration’s religious liberty assault on LGBT rights.”
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on this committee as are fellow “Squad” members, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
The hearing’s stated premise was that the Trump administration is protecting and increasing the religious liberty of religious “zealots” who are discriminating, violating so-called LGBT rights, in the name of their faith.
Representative Ocasio-Cortez, raised Catholic, offering what she claimed as “the perspective of a woman of faith,” stated that religious faith is “being weaponized and mischaracterized” by religious believers who oppose things like the redefinition of marriage or doing surgery on children to try to change them from one sex to another.
First Liberty Institute’s Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser was the only invited panelist representing religious liberty. In addition, there were representatives from the Family Equality Council and the Human Rights Campaign.
Another witness was Evan Minton, a transgender man who sued the Catholic Dignity Health chain for refusing to do a hysterectomy to aid his transition from female to male. (He received one elsewhere.)
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez stated, “My faith commands me to treat Mr. Minton as holy because he is sacred,” continuing, “There is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is.”
Psalm 12, in the Bible actual Christians read, contains a prayer that God would guard and preserve us from the ungodliness of “this generation”.
Verses 2-4 address the arrogance of those who misrepresent God’s truth. It reads: “Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, Those who say, ‘With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us, who is master over us?’”
Who indeed?