Connect with us

California Barber Cites Religious Beliefs to Refuse Transgender Army Veteran a Haircut

Published

on

The Barbershop in Rancho Cucamonga refuses to serve women and people who identify as transgender. “People go against what God has created, you start getting everything all out of whack,” he says.

A barbershop in Rancho Cucamonga is getting a lot of attention after refusing service to a transgender man. Army veteran Kendall Oliver went online to book an appointment for a haircut at The Barbershop, but was surprised and humiliated after being turned away.

“I identify as male,” Oliver told NBC4 News in an interview. “I just feel more comfortable that way… They said, ‘It doesn’t matter ma’am, we still won’t cut a woman’s hair.”

So why did The Barbershop really refuse service to Oliver?

“I have religious convictions that prevent me from cutting women’s hair,” explained Richard Hernandez, owner of The Barbershop. He refuses to serve women and people who identify as transgender. “It’s a shame for a man to have long hair, but if a woman has long hair, it’s her glory and it speaks to being given to her as her covering, and I don’t want to be one who is taking away from her glory.”

Oliver disagrees.

“I don’t see how that should affect a business. I’m a customer here, you provide a service, and everyone is entitled to that service,” Oliver said.

When interviewed by CBS2 News, Hernandez defended himself by saying, “It’s not our intention to discriminate against anyone based on sexual orientation or gender of anything like that. The Bible teaches us that a woman’s hair is her glory.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination by privately-owned places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin. California goes even further by covering gender and sexual orientation. 

This incident is the latest example of people using religion to discriminate against others. It goes to show that the so-called “religious freedom” bills popping up across the country have consequences that extend beyond bakeries refusing to bake cakes for same-sex couples. Here are a few other examples:

  • In February 2015, a pediatrician in Michigan refused to treat a newborn because the child’s parents were lesbians. She said she had prayed before making her decision.
  • In April 2013, a man was arrested at a hospital in Missouri when he refused to leave the bedside of his partner, even though he had a power of attorney.
  • In February 2015, a gay man was refused funeral services for his husband and then when the funeral did take place, church members handed the family antigay pamphlets.
  • In January 2016, Republican State Senator in Nebraska introduced a bill that would allow adoption agencies to refuse to place children in the homes of qualified LGBT parents.

“People go against what God has created, you start getting everything all out of whack,” Hernandez said when defending his right to discriminate; however he’s arguing a lost cause. Whether it’s denying the LGBT community medical attention, funeral services, marriage licenses, food, or even haircuts, discrimination is just wrong, period. In California, it’s even illegal. 

 

Image: Screenshot via NBC4 News

There's a reason 10,000 people subscribe to NCRM. You can get the news before it breaks just by subscribing, plus you can learn something new every day.
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

More Than Half of Americans Disapprove of Chief Justice John Roberts: Poll

Published

on

Over half of Americans disapprove of the job Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts is doing, according to a new Gallup poll.

In a poll taken this month by Gallup, 53% of American adults disapprove of the job Roberts is doing, compared to 38% who approve and 9% with no opinion. This is the highest disapproval rating since Gallup started asking the question.

It’s also the first time his disapproval rating has been higher than his approval rating. The last time the question was asked was in December 2023, where 46% disapproved compared to 48% approval. Even that was a huge step down from December 2021 when 60% approved and 34% approved.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

When broken out by demographics, 67% of Republicans approved of the job Roberts was doing, compared to 21% disapproval. Only 16% of Democrats approved while 78% disapproved, and among Independents, 35% approved while 57% disapproved.

The poll was conducted via telephone between December 1-15, and had a sample size of 1,016 adults across America. The margin of error was 4%.

The Supreme Court under Roberts has frequently come under fire, particularly when it comes to cases involving President Donald Trump. While the court has not always sided with the president—on Tuesday, it ruled against him in the case about deploying the national guard to Chicago—public perception is that the Court is in Trump’s pocket.

In June 2024, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called the Roberts Court the “most corrupt in American history.” A September 2021 Gallup poll saw the full Court’s approval rating hit a record low of 40%.

A month after Ocasio-Cortez made her comments, the Court made one of its most controversial rulings—deciding that Trump had immunity from prosecution for any acts made in an “official” capacity as president. The Court ruled 6-3 in that case along ideological lines, with Roberts himself writing the court’s opinion.

Experts were shocked that the Court even took up that particular case, as there had been no contradiction in lower court rulings about the limits of presidential immunity.

“Let’s not beat around the bush, decision by the Supreme Court to hear the Trump immunity case is outrageous and, at its heart, fundamentally corrupt,” author and legal expert David Rothkopf wrote at the time the Court decided to hear the case. “The Appeals Court decision was bullet proof and there is no case Trump has any sort of immunity. The decision not to hear it until late April makes further significant trial delays likely. They are deliberately delaying the trial without any reasonable legal reason to do so. This is a political decision and, in my estimation, an ugly one.”

 

Continue Reading

News

Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Attempt to Deport Head of Anti-Hate Group

Published

on

The CEO of a anti-hate group is allowed to stay in the United States after a federal judge stopped his deportation.

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons among other Trump administration officials. Ahmed requested a restraining order so he can fight the administration in court.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Trump administration announced an order to revoke his visa, along with the visas of four other Europeans, over claims of digital censorship. Following the announcement of the government’s intent to deport him, Ahmed alleged that the government was targeting him “as punishment for the research and public reporting carried out by the nonprofit organization that Mr. Ahmed founded and runs, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (“CCDH”), which studies the content moderation policies of major social media companies, including Elon Musk’s company, X Corp.,” the lawsuit read.

READ MORE: Trump Pushes Census Do-Over to Exclude Non-Citizens — and to Immediately Redistrict House

“In other words, Mr. Ahmed faces the imminent prospect of unconstitutional arrest, punitive detention, and expulsion for exercising his basic First Amendment rights.”

District Court Judge Vernon S. Broderick ruled in favor of Ahmed; in addition, Broderick also ruled that Ahmed cannot be arrested and detained before his case can be heard, according to the BBC.

“The federal government can’t deport a green card holder like Imran Ahmed, with a wife and young child who are American, simply because it doesn’t like what he has to say,” Roberta Kaplan, Ahmed’s lawyer, told the BBC.

Ahmed’s anti-hate group was formed to combat disinformation and antisemitism online. In the past it’s collected evidence of racist and extremist content on X since Elon Musk bought the platform. X previously filed suit against CCDH in 2023 over its reporting, alleging the data collected by the group was based on “incorrect, misleading and outdated metrics,” according to the Straits Times.

The anti-hate group has recently criticised ChatGPT amid reports of the program being linked to suicides, murders and self-harm.

On Friday, Ahmed accused the tech industry of urging the administration to retaliate against him.

“This has never been about politics,” he told The Guardian. “What it has been about is companies that simply do not want to be held accountable and, because of the influence of big money in Washington, are corrupting the system and trying to bend it to their will, and their will is to be unable to be held accountable.”

“There is no other industry, that acts with such arrogance, indifference and a lack of humility and sociopathic greed at the expense of people,” he added.

The visa bans announced on Tuesday also targeted former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, Global Disinformation Index CEO Clare Melford and Anna Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, according to The Hill.

“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” Rubio tweeted Tuesday. “Today, @StateDept will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”

Of the five, Ahmed is the only one who actually lives in the United States. The others, as of this writing, remain barred from entering the United States.

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

Stephen Miller Shares Bizarre Anti-Immigration Tweet Referencing Frank Sinatra

Published

on

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shared a bizarre tweet Friday using an old Christmas special as an excuse to slam migrants.

“Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids,” Miller wrote.  Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.”

The 1967 Christmas special can be seen on YouTube. The show is a variety show featuring not just the two famous crooners, but their semi-famous offspring, including Deana, Ricci and Dino on the Martin side, along with Nancy and Frank Junior on the Sinatra side.

READ MORE: ‘Red Flag’: Stephen Miller Accused of ‘Reviving Fascist Rhetoric’ at Kirk Memorial

It’s not clear what in the special would have made Miller think about “infinity migrants” coming to America, but both Martin and Sinatra were first-generation Americans with parents who came to the U.S. from Italy.

Miller is an anti-immigration hardliner, and has been called the “architect” of the Trump administration’s immigration policy by Reuters. Earlier this month, he condemned the children of migrants—people like Sinatra and Martin—on Fox News.

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” Miller said, according to the New York Times, “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

Miller is in favor of more ICE raids, and called the protests in California this summer an “insurrection” and “all the proof you need that mass migration unravels societies,” according to Forbes. In his role as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, he set a quota of 3,000 arrests a day for ICE.

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.