Fr. Mark Hodges
SACRAMENTO, California, October 11, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — California nursing facility employees could go to jail for referring to patients by their biological gender.
Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener authored the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Resident’s Bill of Rights” that punishes healthcare workers who refer to elderly transgenders by their true sex “willfully and repeatedly.” Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill last week.
Violating transgender-chosen pronouns is punishable by up to a $1,000 fine plus one year in jail.
The new pro-LGBTQI law codifies that nurses and others must use transgender patients’ self-selected name and pronoun, such as “Zir” and “Ze.” It also requires facilities to allow trans men to use women’s bathrooms, and vice versa.
“How can you believe in free speech, but think the government can compel people to use certain pronouns when talking to others?” Greg Burt of California Family Council argued before the state Judiciary Committee. “Compelled speech is not free speech.”
Burt surmised that the First Amendment prohibits forced or coerced speech or thought. He illustrated his point by using the free press and gender non-conforming words such as “Zir” as
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