The Case of Dr. Church: Freedom of Speech/Truth Under Attack in Massachusetts

For the past two years, as a freelance writer for the New England press as well as nationally and locally, I have reported on a number of disconcerting trends which originated in New England, and now have started working their way nationally. The progressive agenda has encouraged the increased encroachment of the state into citizens’ private, and has taken on an unprecedented push in this region, one where Republicans and conservatives stood up against government sponsorship of human slavery and maintained long-standing resistance against Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Government school boards began in Massachusetts. Big Labor took on collective bargaining powers and found a firm stronghold in Rhode Island. Gay marriage began in New England, with Vermont sanctioning civil unions, followed by Massachusetts imposing gay marriage by judicial fiat. In the Bay State, the land where The American Revolution’s “shot heard round the world” was first fired, government bureaucracies, in collusion with Big Labor and Big Lawyers, have inculcated cronyism and corruption to unprecedented heights.

 

Dr. Paul Church

 

Massachusetts, now one of the most heavily dominated one-party Democratic states in the country, also passed laws preventing protests outside of abortion clinics. Even after the Supreme Court struck down those strictures because of their infringement on the First Amendment, former Governor Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley sought to reform the initial law in order to protect a woman’s “right to choose” (although not her right to speak).

State-sponsored laws have made war on families and freedom in other venues, too.

Two years ago, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families held young Justina Pelletier against her and her family’s will. Besides the ongoing work of local activities and Fox News anchor (and Presidential candidate) Mike Huckabee, no one knew about this Orwellian dystopia nightmare. Finally, after much pressure (including my reporting in the Worcester, MA media), Justina was released to another facility in her own state of Connecticut. The greatest failure in this disturbing case of government overreach? The widespread media failure not to report.

Following the judicial fiat imposition of gay marriage on the Commonwealth, the homosexual lobby worked its way into many facets of public life in Massachusetts. Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has promoted education materials to push the LGBT agenda into public education. In counter protest, Catholic teachers in California walked out of schools in refusal to condone same-sex marriage and conduct. Earlier, though, a Lexington, MA parent was arrested after he protested lessons on homosexuality in his son’s kindergarten class.

Now private industries, including the medical field, are embracing Gay Pride programs, even if it means bullying individual employees to comply with the activities or lose their jobs. ALthough Buzzfeed played up the imposition of gay marriage as a small, benign matter with happy festivities and “more love all around”, pro-family groups like Mass Resistance and TFP Student Action depict a more severe, less warm and fuzzy reality of what happened afterwards.

One current and distressing example of this concerns the case of Dr. Paul Church, an established urologist at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center and the administration which faulted him for his views on homosexual conduct, including his concerns about the medical implications of the behavior, and his resistance to participating in pro-gay pride activities promoted by the hospital.

Mass Resistance, the pro-life and pro-family group based in Boston, MA reported the following:

On March 30, a major Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), expelled a well-respected urologist from its medical staff because he voiced concerns about the unhealthy nature of homosexual behavior and objected to the hospital’s aggressive promotion of “gay pride” activities.

Dr. Church has worked in a number of countries and worked on issues pertaining to sexual conduct and the consequences of high-risk behaviors. For over a decade, he voiced initial concerns about the hospital’s investment and promotion in “Gay Pride” activities. He and his like-minded colleagues first met token opposition, even ridicule.  Despite the initial backlash, Dr. Church proceeded to report the medical concerns as well as the moral opprobrium connected with homosexual behavior.  Read this timeline for more information. He faced tighter sanctions from this administrators, including one who was eventually forced to resign following immoral dalliances with a subordinate. They eventually imposed a gag order on the doctor. Finally, he was asked to resign, then summarily terminated.

Mass Resistance commented:

This is outrageous. A respected physician – particularly one on the staff of Harvard Medical School and a major hospital – should not have his career essentially ended because he’s simply telling the truth.

Aside from the Patch news service, and a report from the Boston  Business Journal, the Massachusetts media, liberal and conservative, have reported nothing on this trampling of freedom of speech. Following press inquiries to Liberty Counsel, the law firm representing Dr. Church in his upcoming appeal, media personnel responded that they are not issuing and press releases until after the appellate hearing, in compliance with Massachusetts law.

 

Dr. Church (center) with Liberty Counsel

 

The Boston Business Journal reports:

"Dr. Church has objected to the promotion of homosexuality because of the inherent dangers of homosexual activity," Mast said. "... Dr. Church has repeatedly made known his objections (to homosexuality) in a medical capacity, and his wishes that he not be the recipient of these (LGBT events) based on his Christian-based beliefs. Both of those requests have been ignored."

Final Reflection

Perhaps Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was right, and the Supreme Court’s decision to create another right at the expense of others explicitly in the Constitution have transformed the judicial branch “the greatest threat to American Democracy”.

Whatever one’s views about same-sex conduct or the role of the state in defining marriage, or a private institution’s knowledge or dissemination on either, a professional’s standing and career should not be in jeopardy for speaking one’s mind and voicing concerns on the subject.

Up to press time, media silence reigns over the Church controversy, as in the Justina Pelletier case. How much longer will these attack on individual liberty continue unabated?