Catholic Nuns Face Prison for Refusing Preferred Pronouns, Trans Bathroom Mandate

For the past 125 years, the Catholic nuns over at Rosary Hill Home located in Hawthorne, New York, they've been compassionately caring for the dying. These women are really the epitome of goodness. They've dedicated their whole lives to worship and to look after those who are less fortunate. And quite literally thousands of people with incurable cancer have had better dying days because of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. And so here's the question. How does the state of New York treat these amazing women? Do they celebrate their good deeds and tireless service? Do they commend them for never taking a dime from the taxpayers? And the answer is no. The state has instead been threatening to either close down the hospice and or to lock up the nuns themselves and put them into prison. Why? Because they refuse to use preferred pronouns, to let men use the ladies room, as well as to undergo training in gender ideology for all the employees. Basically, they refuse to follow the state's LGBTQ laws for care homes. And in response, the sisters have launched a legal battle in defense of their religious freedom in the face of basically a newly passed piece of ideological legislation. And now they have a powerful ally in the form of the Justice Department having just joined their case on their side. Let's go through all the details in this case together with two pieces of housekeeping at first. First, please do smash those like and subscribe buttons so this story can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. Thank you so much for that. And then secondly, and very coolly, over on Epic TV, we just published a phenomenal new documentary called Final Hours. It's a really unique film because in it are a bunch of interviews with people who had literally died before. These are people who are clinically dead. They had no pulse, no breath, not even a flicker of consciousness. They were just 100% clinically dead. But then they came back. They got resuscitated. And the stories they tell about their experiences is really something else. The world they saw, the unconditional love that they felt radiating from all around, how they were able to watch their whole lives unfold from outside the constraints of time. And what was really interesting is that so many people, completely unrelated to one another, had such similar stories after coming back to life. And so that's all to say it's a great movie and it shines a light on this growing body of actual scientific research on the new field of study, post-death experiences. If you want to check it out, which I would highly recommend, the link to it will be right there at the top of the description box below. Just click on that link and it'll take you to Epic TV where you can watch Final Hours for yourself. Now, with that aside, getting back to the main topic of The Nuns, Rosary Hill Home was founded in the year 1900 by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, daughter of famous novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, for your reference, wrote The Scarlet Letter. Rosary Hill Home is a 42-bed skilled nursing facility that provides palliative care and comfort to poor cancer patients in their final dying days. In an interview with EWTN, the Global Catholic TV Network, you have Mother Maria Edwards sum up their mission as follows. Really our greatest effort to take the homeless and those without families, we tell them we're your family. We are trying to be Christ to the sick poor and they are Christ to us. We have never charged anyone anything over 123, 24 years. We have not taken insurance, Medicare, Medicaid. It was all by this gracious donations of benefactors. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment. 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However, within the state of New York legislature, something called the LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residence Bill of Rights was passed, and then it was signed into law in 2023. It then went into effect in 2024. And the law itself is fairly lengthy, but in short, relevant to our discussion, it imposes gender identity mandates on all long-term care facilities in the state, requiring them, among many other things, to, for one, assign patients to rooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex, even if the roommate in that room is against it. Secondly, to permit men to use women's bathrooms and vice versa. Thirdly, to use patients' preferred pronouns even when they're not present in the room. Fourthly, to accommodate patients' desire for extramarital relations. And then lastly, it required all staff to undergo training in gender ideology. And so right from the get-go, it doesn't take much of an imagination to see the types of scenarios that might crop up because of that bill of rights. As just one example, imagine you're an elderly lady, you're frail, you're crippled with cancer, and you just wanted to spend your last days in peace. Suddenly though, your new roommate happens to be a man in a dress. You have no say in the matter, you can't even escape him when you go to the restroom, he complains that you didn't call him by the preferred pronoun of she, and then when he wants to invite his boyfriend over for a romantic evening, there's nothing you can do about it because it's the law. Now, one important thing to note here is that no one has ever complained about the sisters ever since that law was signed into effect, and no one's complained about the care that's been provided at the Rosary Hill Home. Indeed, there has been no documented cases of a transgender individual being denied access to the ladies' room at the Rosary Hill Home. In fact, the New York State Department of Health, they said from the years 2022 up until 2026, they received zero complaints about Rosary Hill Home, and they've issued zero citations against them. In comparison, there were 55,000 complaints against all the other nursing homes collectively, which if you do the math, that's an average of 23 citations per nursing home. And so obviously, the nuns are doing something right for over a century, but this new law suddenly made them essentially criminals. State regulators, they've made it clear that what the new law stipulates is not optional for the sisters. They must comply with the new law or face repercussions, which include fines, injunctions, loss of licensure, and even potentially imprisonment. And for their part, the state of New York is quite serious, evidenced by the fact that the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne said that they have now received at least three formal letters from the state demanding their compliance. And they've been warned that they face imminent fines as well as their relocation of their license if they continue their religious practices. For your In New York state, willful violation of public health law is punishable by upwards of one year in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, or both prison and the fine. A willful violation is a knowing one, exactly what the sisters are doing now. And despite the fact, the prospect of facing real prison time, the nuns have not complied, and they say that they do not intend to. They've instead filed a lawsuit against the state saying that these new policies are directly infringing on their first amendment religious rights. Doug Wilson, CEO of the Catholic Benefits Association, said the following regarding the case, quote, if religious freedom does not protect the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who does it protect? These are real people serving dying patients. They accept no government or insurance funds. Shouldn't they be allowed to conduct their ministry consistent with the Catholic values that inspire them to undertake this holy work in the first place? In their actual lawsuit, the sisters say that their first and their 14th amendment rights are being violated and they're seeking an exemption from the transgender care facility mandate. And if you're interested, by the way, I will put a link to the PDF of the lawsuit down in the description box below. It's actually got great pictures of the nuns doing their hospice work in it and you can see some of them on screen for yourself. So if you want to check it out, it'll be down in the description box below. And the nuns make a point in that lawsuit of mentioning that this is not about discrimination. The sisters say that those who struggle with their gender identity deserve compassion, sensitivity and respect, just like anybody else. They claim that they're not against anyone, but rather in the lawsuit, they explain how their faith precludes them from acting in accordance with the new New York state guidelines. Quote, transgender medicine can change surface appearance, but never sex. And scripture forbids lying to another about reality, requiring a person to identify another by a sex other than his or her God gifted sex would therefore require such a person to act against central, unchangeable and architectural teachings of the Catholic faith. Essentially, they're saying that this New York state law would force them to go against their beliefs, beliefs that they've given their entire lives to in the service of others. And these nuns obviously are not about to throw away their religious beliefs just because the New York state legislature told them to. And within the federal government, the sisters have found a powerful ally. And to that end, several weeks ago, the Department of Justice became a co-plaintiff in the case. Speaking of the matter, you had Assistant Attorney General Ms. Harmeet Dhillon say the following quote, states should take notice that they cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology. New York's law would force these religious women to choose between their faith and their license if they wish to continue serving the dying. Now, the case itself is currently slowly moving its way through the court system, and a hearing date has yet to be set. However, looking at some recent analogous cases, it seems like the nuns are in a pretty good position, legally speaking. For instance, in 2022, in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, you had the Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home versus Pennsylvania. And that case dealt with the question of religious freedom as it related to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Basically, that law was forcing those nuns to provide free contraceptive coverage to their employees. However, Little Sisters were successful in that lawsuit, and the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of allowing religious and or moral objections to that mandate. Likewise, there was another case called the Diocese of Albany versus Harris, which actually went to the Supreme Court twice. Now, the issue in that case was that in the year 2017, the New York State Department of Financial Services mandated that employers must cover abortions in their employee health care plans. Initially, there were some religious carve-outs included in the bill, but those exceptions were actually almost completely stripped away under pressure from activists. And so that left a vast network of New York-based dioceses, churches, as well as ministries being required to fund abortions or face crippling fines. Sounds a little bit familiar to the Rosary Hill Home. However, in January of this year, the Diocese of Albany won. They settled with the state of New York, who agreed to no longer enforce the abortion mandate against them. And so the legal tide does seem to be in favor of protecting religious freedom, as well as religious exemptions in cases like these. But of course, the specifics of every case are different, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens to the sisters at the Rosary Hill Home. Until any new developments come forth, if you'd like to read more about their case or some of the previous analogous cases I went through in the episode, those links will be down in the description box below. And also, if you just want to learn more about their work and the Rosary Hill Home, those links will be down there as well. And then lastly, again, if you haven't already, please do smash those like and subscribe buttons. It helps the video a ton. And then lastly, lastly, if you want to check out Final Hours, that great film kind of examining the growing body of scientific research in the post-death experience realm, check it out. It'll be linked there at the top of the description box below. What happens after death? Technically I was dead, but I felt that this was more real than real, and I felt more alive than life itself. Thousands have glimpsed something vast and loving, waiting on the other side. I was surrounded by beings, some of them I recognize from this life. It's more just like a light, the light of God. I was so happy. I just felt like more and more of the pain of this world was just floating away. What do these human experiences mean for our collective soul? The more we can come into harmony, love, and kindness, the more we're aligned with the essence of the universe. And then, until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epoch Times. Stay informed, and most importantly, stay free.