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New York nuns forced to fight back against crazy gender law telling them to treat biological men as women at hospice

Just when we thought that gender ideology nonsense and pronoun tyranny had died off, there’s a story that reminds us how deeply entrenched it is in our society.

This week, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, NY, who run Rosary Hill Home — a Catholic hospice for the impoverished — filed a lawsuit accusing the state of violating their constitutional rights. It relates to a 2024 law that requires the facility to affirm gender identity in regard to patients’ pronouns, room assignments and restroom usage.

New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights was sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal when he was a state senator. The state’s health department has sent three letters to Rosary Hill Home warning them about compliance.

But the idea that anyone can change their biological sex is contrary to Catholic belief.

“We Sisters have taken care of patients from all walks of life, ideologies, and faiths,” Mother Marie Edward, general superior of the Hawthorne Dominicans, said in a statement. “We treat each patient with dignity and Christian charity. We have never had complaints. We cannot implement New York’s mandate without violating our Catholic faith.”

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Back in early March, the facility wrote to the state asking for an exemption to the law, but their request was met with silence, said their attorney Martin Nussbaum. He notes that the state has given one to facilities run by the Church of Christ, Scientist.

Rosary Hill Home has 42 beds and the sisters separate men and women by floors. But under the law, if a biological man said he was a woman and demanded to room with females, the nuns would have to oblige. Even over the objections of any women who also lay dying.

The facility itself has a unique history. It was founded in 1901 by Mother Mary Alphonsa, formerly Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. She was the daughter of “The Scarlet Letter” author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Sisters do the Lord’s work, providing comfort to the impoverished who are dying of cancer — and they’ve been doing it compassionately for over 100 years. To now insist that they adopt guidelines contrary to their teachings is not only a violation of their First Amendment rights, it’s pure insanity.

Take for example, the 57-page curriculum the state requires for workers to use as a guide.

It seems to be more interested in affirming gender fantasies than the tireless work of administering end-of-life care.

Caretakers are advised to not make assumptions about a patient’s identity: “Ask open-ended questions to help you better understand how they self-identify.” They are given an example of “Alex,” a “gender nonconforming resident who asks for directions to the restroom. And when a worker shows him the men’s room, “Alex frowns and walks away. That kind of assumption can unintentionally signal it is unsafe for residents to disclose” information about themselves.

Another section stresses the importance of pronouns and how they help to “affirm” identities. It even urges workers to share their pronouns.

That kind of woke overreach was insulting in a corporate setting, never mind to Catholic nuns and the lay staff singularly devoted to providing comfort and dignity to the dying.

“They accompany people on their final journey in life. They are serving the neediest of the needy,” said Nussbaum of the nuns. And they are performing these charitable acts for free. But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished — especially while operating under the thumb of progressive government overlords obsessed with identity politics.

A spokesperson for the State’s Department of Heath said that, while they don’t “comment on pending or ongoing litigation, the NYS Department of Health is committed to following state law, which provides nursing home residents certain rights protecting against discrimination including, but not limited to, gender identity or expression.”   

Violations can result in fines, loss of licensing and, ultimately, jail time.

“The implications are so much greater than whether to utter the words ’he’ or ’she,’” the nuns’ lawsuit states. “Indeed, to demand that a Catholic deny another’s sex is to require him or her to affirm another religious worldview.”

And we know adherents of the church of gender ideology are the most zerlous worshippers, unable to accept any kind of dissent.

Everyone must genuflect to the nonsense. Even nuns.

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Kirsten Fleming New York nuns forced to fight back against crazy gender law telling them to treat biological men as women at hospice

New York nuns forced to fight back against crazy gender law telling them to treat biological men as women at hospice

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