Consider the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who operate a 42-bed nursing facility in New York that gives free palliative care to poor people with cancer. The State of New York is trying to force this Catholic institution to deliberately violate their religious beliefs. The New York State Department of Health requires the Sisters to begin
- assigning patients to rooms by self-identified sex
- [stop] segregating restrooms by biological sex
- use…patients’ preferred pronouns even when the patient is not present
- allow patients to cross-dress
The Department is threatening the Sisters with fines, injunctions, potential loss of licensing, and imprisonment if they do not repudiate their religious beliefs and commit these egregious to them acts.
The Sisters have applied for a religious exemption, and the State has ignored their application.
The Sisters are just the tip of a monstrous iceberg. This is Party’s attitude toward the 1st Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses. Party already badly wants to disarm us and deny us our right to speak as we see fit. Now we’re to have no conscience, as well.