By Bob Marshall
The Washington Stand
The 1942 Supreme Court decision Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson invalidating a 1935 Oklahoma mandatory criminal sterilization statute successfully challenged by a chicken thief may give President Donald Trump unexpected constitutional support for his recent executive order to protect America’s children from chemical and surgical mutilation resulting from so-called medical professionals, who “are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
The link between these two seemingly disparate eras and social fads lies in the acceptance in 1942 by state legislators of the pseudoscience of eugenic sterilization as an ostensible criminal prophylaxis, and current state lawmakers’ groveling support of the equally bogus and suspect medical ideology of today’s transgender reassignment fraudsters ruining children’s fertility to “rectify” the alleged mistake made at birth when they were “assigned the wrong sex.”
First, the 1935 Oklahoma law in question held that a person who had been convicted three or more times of a felony involving moral turpitude in Oklahoma or elsewhere was a “habitual criminal” and “that such person shall be rendered sexually sterile.”
Jack T. Skinner had been convicted of chicken stealing and armed robbery twice. In 1936, Oklahoma’s attorney general instituted sterilization proceedings against Skinner, who sued raising 14th Amendment objections.
Justice William O. Dougles noted: “This case touches a sensitive and important area of human rights. Oklahoma deprives certain individuals of a right which is basic to the perpetuation of a race the right to have offspring. … Because that decision raised grave and substantial constitutional questions, we granted the petition for certiorari.”
Douglas pointed out that, “A person who enters a chicken coop and steals chickens commits a felony … and he may be sterilized if he is thrice convicted. If, however, he is a bailee of the property and fraudulently appropriates it … no matter how habitual his proclivities for embezzlement are, and no matter how often his conviction, he may not be sterilized.” That disparate treatment violated the 14th Amendment.
Justice Douglas’s reasoning applies both to sterilization as a criminal penalty, and to LGBT ideologues clamoring for tax-paid gender transition “treatment” of minor children even without parental consent:
“… We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize … may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects … it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty.”
Justice Robert Jackson, who “read the law” to become a justice of the Supreme Court, concurred, observing, “There are limits to the extent to which a legislatively represented majority may conduct biological experiments at the expense of the dignity and personality and natural powers of a minority — even those who have been guilty of what the majority define as crimes.”
President Trump’s executive order details a comprehensive approach to rooting out the influence of gender transition “treatment” of minors:
“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.
“Accordingly … within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion.
“The Secretary of HHS … shall use all available methods to increase the quality of data to guide practices for improving the health of minors with gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion, or who otherwise seek chemical or surgical mutilation.”
“… The head of each executive department or agency … that provides research or education grants to medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, shall … in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.
“… The Secretary of HHS shall … end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children, including regulatory and sub-regulatory actions …
“… the Secretary of Defense shall commence … action to exclude chemical and surgical mutilation of children from TRICARE coverage and amend the TRICARE provider handbook to exclude chemical and surgical mutilation of children.
“… The Director of the Office of Personnel Management … shall … include provisions in the Federal Employee Health Benefits … and Postal Service Health Benefits … including the Foreign Service Benefit Plan, will exclude coverage for pediatric transgender surgeries or hormone treatments …
“The Attorney General shall … prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation … convene States’ Attorneys General and other law enforcement officers to coordinate the enforcement of laws against female genital mutilation across all American States and Territories; … prioritize investigations and take appropriate action to end deception of consumers, fraud, and violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by any entity that may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation; … in consultation with the Congress, work to draft, propose, and promote legislation to enact a private right of action for children and the parents of children whose healthy body parts have been damaged by medical professionals practicing chemical and surgical mutilation, which should include a lengthy statute of limitations; and prioritize investigations and take appropriate action to end child-abusive practices by so-called sanctuary States that facilitate stripping custody from parents who support the healthy development of their own children, including by considering the application of the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act and recognized constitutional rights.”
You may ask, where do such bizarre ideas and claims originate from?
Well, Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us, “There is no new thing under the sun.” So, without going into too much detail, the current transgender phenomenon and political claims are strikingly similar to the beliefs and practices of the first-century A.D. gnostics, whether pseudo-Christian or as purveyors of secular philosophy.
For gnostics, God is not an Almighty, all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful Creator. No, the gnostic creator is finite and very much prone to mistakes in need of “correction.” Enter the transgender doctors who give adolescents puberty blockers, drugs, or even surgery to treat natural, normal physiological processes associated with puberty as a disease in need of “therapy,” such as the artificial reassigning of gender which presupposes that the Designer/Creator of the Universe made a number of mistakes and produced a flawed product, i.e., man and woman.
Since gnostics seek total control over created beings and the natural order and operations of persons and things in the universe, they are willing to mutilate perfectly healthy organs to bring about their own “alteration” of the person, not only as their rights but as their political, moral duty.
Gnostics were decidedly anti-woman. A commenter on the spurious Gospel of Thomas, Daniel McGray, in his site “Gnosticism Explained,” quotes the gnostic holy text as follows:
“Simon Peter said to the other disciples, ‘Mary should leave us, for women do not deserve life.’
“Jesus said to him, ‘Watch — I will show her the way to become a man, so that she too may become a living spirit like you men. For any woman who becomes a man will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
Christians can easily see why such writings were not included as part of the Canon of Holy Scripture. (For more information see Hans Jonas’s “The Gnostic Religion” and Kurt Rudolph’s “Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism.”) And likewise, Christians should write their congressman and senators to support the legislation President Trump is seeking to rid the United States of the socially disruptive and bogus medical practice of transgender transitions.
Lastly, consider that Donald Trump is the only American president who could use a constitutional exoneration of an Oklahoma chicken thief and parlay it into protecting young Americans from having the inestimable gift of being able to have children stolen from them by individuals posing as medical authorities under impeccable, but ultimately false and deceptive pretenses.
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
