SW News: In a letter published this week, the US bishops criticized what they perceived to be flaws in proposed government regulations intended to address alleged discrimination against LGBT people in programs receiving money from the federal Health and Human Services (HHS) Department.

The government stated that the purpose of HHS’s earlier summer Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was to affirm civil rights and equal opportunity for people nationwide in HHS-funded programs and services.

The new policy would clarify and reaffirm the prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in certain statutes as they relate to grant beneficiaries, in order to protect LGBTQI+ people from discrimination in important health and human services programs.

The Office of the General Counsel at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops warned that the NPRM reinterprets some federal anti-discrimination statutes in a way that could create conflicts between the rule's requirements and Catholic teaching in the operation of Catholic charities.

The letter highlights that numerous Catholic charities provide emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence; some of them are set up as single-sex settings. However, the guidelines under consideration arguably mandate the shelters to house biological men who identify as women in single-sex facilities, a practice that would go against fundamental Catholic teachings about the immutable difference between, and dignity of, men and women.

The letter said any charity may be required to address an employee or beneficiary by pronouns that do not correspond with his or her biological sex, in violation of Catholic beliefs, adding that any charity may be required to allow men to use the women's facility and vice versa.

According to the general counsel's letter, the rule imposes unconstitutional conditions on participation in government programs, which threatens their capacity to carry out Catholic humanitarian services.

The letter said the proposed rule reflects anthropological premises that are simply not true.