BY MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS OCTOBER 15 2024
Early voting has begun, and tens of thousands of ballots have already been cast in the Empire State. Well before any polls open on October 26, and certainly before election day on November 5, New Yorkers are receiving ballots via mail and filling them out. Aside from selecting the President, Senator, State Senator, Member of Assembly, or the myriads of judges they may have to face in court someday, New Yorkers are flipping that ballot over and determining if men are allowed to violate women’s species and privacy.
Yes, the proposal on the back of everyone’s ballot is a way for the state to enshrine attacking women in locker rooms, bathrooms, and everywhere else that is segregated. The proposal reads innocuously as such:
“This proposal amends Article 1, Section 11 of the New York Constitution. Section 11 now protects against unequal treatment based on race, color, creed, and religion. The proposal will amend the act to also protect against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, and pregnancy outcomes, as well as reproductive healthcare and autonomy.
So it will add to the New York Constitution a protection against unequal treatment based on gender identity and gender expression. This literally means that if a boy says he is a girl, identifies as such, expresses himself as such, he must be treated that way. That means he can use a girls locker room in a high school or college, at the gym, or anywhere else. To prevent him from doing so would violate the New York Constitution.
When digging further into the language of Article 1, Section 11, the amendment would remove the phrase “his or her” when referencing subjects of discrimination, and replacing it with the word “their.” This is not mean for the purposes of economic grammar. This is literally because “his or her” does not encompass the human condition any longer. There are no more men and women, rather a large array of self-expressing genders that anyone could be. How many genders? No one knows for sure, so to be safe, just include everyone.
These restrictions are not limited to publicly-funded places, like public schools. They include “any other person or by any firm, corporation, or institution, or by the state or any agency or subdivision of the state, pursuant to law.” This discrimination has no limiting principle. So if a person misgenders someone or calls them by a name they used to have, then the state could be notified and sicced upon the perpetrator of this heinous crime.
The NYCLU, a Civil Rights organization in name only, desperately wants everyone to vote Yes on this proposal. They would love to enshrine this – and abortion – in the Constitution, because they think that in the future, their radicalism would be seen for what it is, and the people of New York will finally begin to undo the extremist laws that have been put in place since the Democrats took full control of the state in 2019.
“We might like to think we’re safe from these attacks here in New York,” they wrote in July, “but the truth is there are dangerous loopholes in our state constitution that leave us vulnerable to the whims of politicians. And though we have strong laws protecting us from discrimination, we know that laws aren’t enough.”
The notion that Lee Zeldin, as moderate a Republican as there is, came within six points of becoming Governor has them quaking in their boots. They need to pass this proposal or people may think that abortion until point of birth is a bad thing or women should fend for themselves when men come into their private spaces.
This is a dangerous proposal that will pass if people are ignorant of the ramifications. It’s imperative for everyone voting this month to vote NO on ballot proposal 1.
