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For those who don’t know the lightning rod that is John Carpay, he is the President of the “Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms“. Though I don’t always understand the significance of the cases the Centre champions or always agree with the Centre’s perspectives, I do agree with the need to challenge the dogmas of our day.

Scan the “Active Cases” the Centre is working on and you get a sense that there are more nuanced positions than the media either can, or want to report. Often the cases are pushing against increasingly invasive governmental politics, unjust laws, or those who belong to special interest groups making spurious cases, as with:

  • Jessica Yaniv, a transgender woman in B.C., has filed over a dozen human rights complaints against businesses she alleges discriminated against her on the basis of gender identity.
  • The case involving “babysitter candidate”, James Cyrynowski who objected to parent interviews to find out “all the relevant information… about a potential babysitter, including their age and sex.” As the parent (defendant) said, “I thought I was doing what was best for my young children.”

In the short video clip above, Carpay speaks to the inconsistency of the law on “self-identity”. As I wrote in “Trans-Identity Revisited: The Curious Case of Race” regarding the bizarre case of Rachel Dolezal who claimed to be “black”, I pushed back against Meredith Talusan (Transgender writer for the Guardian) who explained that “the fundamental difference between Dolezal’s actions and trans people’s is that her decision to identify as black was an active choice, whereas transgender people’s decision to transition is almost always involuntary.”

To this I wrote:

“Involuntary” identity is claimed by gender/sexual identity groups as a kind of pass from any deeper discussion about identity and personhood. Who is Talusan to say Dolezal “chose” her black identity as opposed to being involuntarily caught up in being African American? With a confessed lack of choice comes a lack of responsibility for one’s identity…”

To read (much) more, see numerous posts in my series on “Trans-Identity.”

Love him or hate him, John Carpay and the Justice Centre are serious about… Justice.

I welcome any insight you might have on “Trans-Identity” or on the “Justice Centre“.