RUTH BADER GINSBURG: The Place of Women on the Court

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&referer=http://futurestorm.blogspot.com/2009/07/supreme-court-justice-ruth-bader.html?m=1
July, 2009

The Place of Women on the Court

In late February, three weeks after she had an operation for a recurrence of cancer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to Barack Obama’s first address to Congress. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t an event anyone expected her to attend. She went, she said, because she wanted the country to see that there was a woman on the Supreme Court. 

Now another woman, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is about to begin the confirmation hearings that stand between her and a seat near Ginsburg on the high bench. After 16 years on the court — the last three, since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, as the only woman working alongside eight men — Ginsburg has a unique perspective on what’s at stake in Sotomayor’s nomination. I sat down with the 76-year-old justice last week to talk about women on the bench and their effect on the dynamics and decisions of the court.

I first met Justice Ginsburg a year ago, when she invited me to her chambers and to a tea for international fellows from Georgetown law school, at which she was speaking. It struck me then, as we walked through the courthouse, that each marker she pointed out involved women’s history — from a photograph and a political cartoon in the hallway outside her chambers of Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar, to the renaming of a dining room at the court in honor of Natalie Cornell Rehnquist, wife of the late chief justice. (The tribute was O’Connor’s idea. “My former chief was a traditionalist, but he could hardly object,” Ginsburg said with a bit of glee.) 

This time, we talked for 90 minutes in the personal office of Ginsburg’s temporary chambers (she is soon moving to the chambers that Justice David Souter is vacating). Ginsburg, who was wearing an elegant cream-colored suit, matching pumps and turquoise earrings, spoke softly, and at times her manner was mild, but she was forceful about why she thinks Sotomayor should be confirmed and about a few of the court’s recent cases. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our interview.

At the end of our time together, Ginsburg rose and said energetically that she would soon be off to her twice-weekly 7 p.m. personal-training session. She works out at the court on an elliptical machine, and she lifts weights. “To keep me in shape,” she said.

Q: At your confirmation hearings in 1993, you talked about how you hoped to see three or four women on the court. How do you feel about how long it has taken to see simply one more woman nominated?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: My prediction was right for the Supreme Court of Canada. They have Beverley McLachlin as the chief justice, and they have at least three other women. The attrition rate is slow on this court. 

Q: Now that Judge Sotomayor has been nominated, how do you feel about that?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I feel great that I don’t have to be the lone woman around this place. 

Q: What has that been like?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: It’s almost like being back in law school in 1956, when there were 9 of us in a class of over 500, so that meant most sections had just 2 women, and you felt that every eye was on you. Every time you went to answer a question, you were answering for your entire sex. It may not have been true, but certainly you felt that way. You were different and the object of curiosity.

Q: Did you feel that this time around from your male colleagues?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: My basic concern about being all alone was the public got the wrong perception of the court. It just doesn’t look right in the year 2009. 

Q: Why on a deeper level does it matter? It’s not just the symbolism, right?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: It matters for women to be there at the conference table to be doing everything that the court does. I hope that these hearings for Sonia will be as civil as mine were and Steve Breyer’s were. Ours were unusual in that respect. 

Q: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being “bullying” or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I can’t say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They’ll seize on any handle. One is that she’s a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”] And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you’ve said something that you didn’t get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I’m sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All of our differences make the conference better. That I’m a woman, that’s part of it, that I’m Jewish, that’s part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me. 

Once Justice O’Connor was questioning counsel at oral argument. I thought she was done, so I asked a question, and Sandra said: Just a minute, I’m not finished. So I apologized to her and she said, It’s O.K., Ruth. The guys do it to each other all the time, they step on each other’s questions. And then there appeared an item in USA Today, and the headline was something like“Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra.” 

Q: It seemed to me that male judges do much more abrasive things all the time, and it goes unremarked.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the notion that Sonia is an aggressive questioner — what else is new? Has anybody watched Scalia or Breyer up on the bench? 

Q: She’ll fit right in?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: She’ll hold her own. 

Q: From your point of view, does having another woman on the court matter primarily in terms of the public’s perception, or also for what it feels like to be in conference and on the bench?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: All of those things. What was particularly good was that Sandra and I were different — not cast in the same mold. Sandra gets out two words to my every one. I think that Sonia and I will also be quite different in our style. I think she may be the first justice who didn’t have English as her native language. And she has done just about everything that you can do in law as a prosecutor, in a private firm and on the District Court and the Court of Appeals. 

Q: Do you know her well or a little bit?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I know her because I’m the Second Circuit Justice. So I go once a year to the Judicial Conference. 

Q: What do you think about Judge Sotomayor’s frank remarks that she is a product of affirmative action?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So am I. I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972, every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program. Every university had a contract, and Stan Pottinger would go around and ask, How are you doing on your affirmative-action plan? William McGill, who was then the president of Columbia, was asked by a reporter: How is Columbia doing with its affirmative action? He said, It’s no mistake that the two most recent appointments to the law school are a woman and an African-American man. 

Q: And was that you?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I was the woman. I never would have gotten that invitation from Columbia without the push from the Nixon administration. I understand that there is a thought that people will point to the affirmative-action baby and say she couldn’t have made it if she were judged solely on the merits. But when I got to Columbia I was well regarded by my colleagues even though they certainly disagreed with many of the positions that I was taking. They backed me up: If that’s what I thought, I should be able to speak my mind.

Q: Is that another example of how you’ve worked with men over the years?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world. If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

Q: You sent me an article by Michael Klarman, a Harvard law professor, that was about ways in which you and Thurgood Marshall were effective as litigators. Klarman pointed out that you were very good at influencing a male lawyer’s brief without making him feel that you had taken over the case. Is that something you learned to do? Was it a conscious approach?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it was a conscious approach. If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, You don’t know how to use the English language, or how could you make that argument? It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive. 

Q: Do you think women have to learn how to do that in a different way from men sometimes in the workplace?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I haven’t noticed it. There are some very sympathetic men. 

Q: Is it an approach that you still use with your colleagues to try and have a gentle touch?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, or to have a sense of humor. 

Q: Do you think if there were more women on the court with you that other dynamics would change?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think back to the days when — I don’t know who it was — when I think Truman suggested the possibility of a woman as a justice. Someone said we have these conferences and men are talking to men and sometimes we loosen our ties, sometimes even take off our shoes. The notion was that they would be inhibited from doing that if women were around. I don’t know how many times I’ve kicked off my shoes. Including the time some reporter said something like, it took me a long time to get up from the bench. They worried, was I frail? To be truthful I had kicked off my shoes, and I couldn’t find my right shoe; it traveled way underneath. 

Q: You are said to have very warm relationships with your colleagues. And so I was surprised to read a comment you made in an interview in May with Joan Biskupic of USA Today. You said that when you were a young lawyer, your voice was often ignored, and then a male colleague would repeat a point you’d made, and other people would be alert to it. And then you said this still happens now at conference. 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Not often. It was a routine thing [in the past] that I would say something and it would just pass, and then somebody else would say almost the same thing and people noticed. I think the idea in the 1950s and ’60s was that if it was a woman’s voice, you could tune out, because she wasn’t going to say anything significant. There’s much less of that.But it still exists, and it’s not a special experience that I’ve had. I’ve talked to other women in high places, and they've had the same experience. 

Q: I wonder if that would change if there were more women who were part of the mix on the court?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it undoubtedly would. You can imagine in Canada, where McLachlin is the chief, I think they must have a different way of hearing a woman’s voice if she is the leader. 

Q: I wanted to ask you about the academic research on the effect of sex on judging. Studies have found a difference in the way male and female judges of similar ideologies vote in some cases. And that the presence of a woman on a panel can influence the way her male colleagues vote. How do these findings match your experience? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m very doubtful about those kinds of [results]. I certainly know that there are women in federal courts with whom I disagree just as strongly as I disagree with any man. I guess I have some resistance to that kind of survey because it’s what I was arguing against in the ’70s. Like in Mozart’s opera “Così Fan Tutte”: that’s the way women are. 

Ruven Afanador for The New York Times

Q: We started by talking about the idea of three or four women on the Supreme Court. Could you imagine a Supreme Court that had five or six or seven women on it?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, we’ve had some state Supreme Courts that have had a majority of women. 

Q: Do you have a sense of what that would be like to actually work on and how it would be different? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The work would not be any easier. Some of the amenities might improve. 

Q: Do you think that some of the discrimination cases might turn out differently? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think for the most part, yes. I would suspect that, because the women will relate to their own experiences. 

Q: That’s one area in which outcomes might actually differ?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. I think the presence of women on the bench made it possible for the courts to appreciate earlier than they might otherwise that sexual harassment belongs under Title VII [as a violation of civil rights law]. 

Q: Can I bring up the Ricci case, brought by the New Haven firefighters? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: This case had some very hard elements. It was a bit like the Heller case, which involved the Second Amendment. [Last year, the Supreme Court found that Washington gun-control laws that barred handguns in private homes were unconstitutional.] For that, the plaintiff was a nice guy who was a security guard at the Federal Judicial Center, and he had to carry a gun on his job, but he couldn’t carry it home. And in Ricci, you have a dyslexic firefighter. Which is just exactly what you should do as a lawyer. I mean, that’s what I did. 

Q: It’s true, it’s a very good strategy. He was a very sympathetic plaintiff. And it was important that the city had already given the test that the white firefighters scored high on and the black firefighters did not. 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. And the city weights the written and oral parts of the test 60-40, and says: That’s what the union wanted, it’s been in the bargaining contracts for 20 years. 

I don’t know how many cases there were, Title VII civil rights cases, where unions were responsible. The very first week that I was at Columbia, Jan Goodman, a lawyer in New York, called me and said, Do you know that Columbia has given layoff notices to 25 maids and not a single janitor? Columbia’s defense was the union contract, which was set up so that every maid would have to go before the newly hired janitor would get a layoff notice. 

Q: What about the case this term involving the strip search, in school, of 13-year-old Savana Redding? Justice Souter’s majority opinion, finding that the strip search was unconstitutional, is very different from what I expected after oral argument, when some of the men on the court didn’t seem to see the seriousness here. Is that an example of a case when having a woman as part of the conversation was important?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it makes people stop and think, Maybe a 13-year-old girl is different from a 13-year-old boy in terms of how humiliating it is to be seen undressed. I think many of [the male justices] first thought of their own reaction. It came out in various questions. You change your clothes in the gym, what’s the big deal? 

Q: Seeing that Souter wrote the opinion in Savana Redding’s case reminded me of Justice Rehnquist writing the majority opinion in Nevada v. Hibbs, the 2003 case in which the court ruled 6-3 that the Family Medical Leave Act applies to state employers, for both female and male workers. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in his opinion about an idea you have been talking about for a long time, about stereotypes. He discussed how when women are stereotyped as responsible for the domestic sphere, and men are not, that makes women seem less valuable as employees. I wonder if one of the measures of your success on the court is that a male justice would write an opinion like this?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: That opinion was such a delightful surprise. When my husband read it, he asked, did I write that opinion? I was very fond of my old chief. I have a sense that it was in part his life experience. When his daughter Janet was divorced, I think the chief felt some kind of responsibility to be kind of a father figure to those girls. So he became more sensitive to things that he might not have noticed.

Q: Right. Chief Justice Rehnquist once said that sex-discrimination claims carry little weight. And he quipped at the end of a case you argued, when you were a lawyer, “You won’t settle for putting Susan B. Anthony on the new dollar, then?” Do you think he was affected by working with you and Justice O’Connor?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I wouldn’t attribute it to one thing. I think I would attribute it to his court experience and his life experience. One of the most moving statements at a memorial service I ever heard was when Janet Rehnquist’s daughter read a letter that she had written to her grandfather. The closeness of their relationship and the caring was just beautiful. Most people had no idea that there was that side to Rehnquist. 

Q: You have written, “To turn in a new direction, the court first had to gain an understanding that legislation apparently designed to benefit or protect women could have the opposite effect.” The pedestal versus the cage. Has the court made that turn completely, or is there still more work to be done? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Not completely, as you can see in the case involving whether a child acquires citizenship from an unwed father. [Nguyen v. INS, in which the court in 2001 upheld, by 5 to 4, a law that set different requirements for a child to become a citizen, depending on whether his citizenship rights came from his unmarried mother or his unmarried father.] The majority thought there was something about the link between a mother and a child that doesn’t exist between the father and a child. But in fact the child in the case had been brought up by his father. 

They were held back by a way of looking at the world in which a man who wasn’t married simply was not responsible. There must have been so many repetitions of Madame Butterfly in World War II. And for Justice Stevens [who voted with the majority], that was part of his experience. I think that’s going to be over in the next generation, these kinds of rulings.

Q: Let me ask you about the fight you waged for the courts to understand that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination. 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I wrote about it a number of times. I litigated Captain Struck’s case about reproductive choice. [In 1972, Ginsburg represented Capt. Susan Struck, who became pregnant during her service in the Air Force. At the time, the Air Force automatically discharged any woman who became pregnant and told Captain Struck that she should have an abortion if she wanted to keep her job. The government changed the regulation before the Supreme Court could decide the case.] If the court could have seen Susan Struck’s case — this was the U.S. government, a U.S. Air Force post, offering abortions, in 1971, two years before Roe. 

Q: And suggesting an abortion as the solution to Struck’s problem. 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. Not only that, but it was available to her on the base. 

Q: The case ties together themes of women’s equality and reproductive freedom. The court split those themes apart in Roe v. Wade. Do you see, as part of a future feminist legal wish list, repositioning Roe so that the right to abortion is rooted in the constitutional promise of sex equality?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Oh, yes. I think it will be. 

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often. 

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman. 

Q: Does that mean getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion — like a waiting period — that are not deemed an “undue burden” to a woman’s reproductive freedom? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m not a big fan of these tests. I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman’s decision. It’s entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn’t mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours. 

I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they’re fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change. 

Q: Since we are talking about abortion, I want to ask you about Gonzales v. Carhart, the case in which the court upheld a law banning so-called partial-birth abortion. Justice Kennedy in his opinion for the majority characterized women as regretting the choice to have an abortion, and then talked about how they need to be shielded from knowing the specifics of what they’d done. You wrote, “This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution.” I wondered if this was an example of the court not quite making the turn to seeing women as fully autonomous.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The poor little woman, to regret the choice that she made. Unfortunately there is something of that in Roe. It’s not about the women alone. It’s the women in consultation with her doctor. So the view you get is the tall doctor and the little woman who needs him.

Q: In the 1980s, you wrote about how while the sphere for women has widened to include more work, men haven’t taken on as much domestic responsibility. Do you think that things are beginning to change?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: That’s going to take time, changing that kind of culture. But looking at my own family, my daughter Jane teaches at Columbia, she travels all over the world, and she has the most outstanding supportive husband who certainly carries his fair share of the load. Although their division of labor is different than mine and my husband’s, because my daughter is a super cook. 

Q: Can courts play a role in changing that culture? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The Legislature can make the change, can facilitate the change, as laws like the Family Medical Leave Act do. But it’s not something a court can decree. A court can’t tell the man, You’ve got to do more than carry out the garbage. 

Sent from my iPhone

CHURCHES: We Have Been Warned

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/we-have-been-warned/

We Have Been Warned

Here in the flood zone of south Louisiana, you would be hard-pressed to find a single church or Christian organization (like the school community of which I’m a part) that isn’t in some way helping flood victims. I’m not talking about simply giving money. I’m talking about doing sacrificial work to help those who are helpless. I watched a report on NBC News last night about what we’re going through here, and was struck by the enormous distance between what they showed on that short clip, and the reality that people here see every day. It is much, much worse than most Americans know (see this for one glimpse, and imagine this multiplied by tens of thousands). The need is so great that there is no way this or any government could respond effectively to it on their own.

It’s also true that civil society couldn’t handle it on its own either. We need both — and that’s what we’re getting here. Istrouma Baptist Church, for example, is one of the biggest churches in the city, and has opened its campus as a staging area for relief operations (if you want to help, click here to find out what you can do). The work of the local churches, both big and small, in bringing desperately needed relief to the suffering is irreplaceable.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and thinking about how to many Americans, the thing most important to them about churches like those in this conservative part of America is that they (the churches) hold “bigoted” attitudes about LGBTs. In the years to come, those churches will be forced to pay a significant penalty for holding those views. Some people say that loss of tax-exempt status, which is what many progressives would like to see happen to dissident churches, will be no big deal. Why should their tax dollars go to subsidize bigotry? they reason.

It will be a very big deal. All contributions to churches and Christian organizations doing relief work are tax-deductible at the present time. This will likely go away, dramatically hampering the resources available to conservative churches like Istrouma to help the suffering in instances like this. Far as I know, nobody has seen crews from the Human Rights Campaign mucking out houses or feeding refugees.

Of course if they lose their tax exemption, churches will still do these things. But they will have many fewer resources with which to do so. Progressives either have not thought about this, or, as I suspect, they just don’t care. Purity on LGBT issues is all that matters.

Last year, the Baptist ethicist David Gushee was quoted by gay New York Times columnist Frank Bruni as saying that “Conservative Christian religion is the last bulwark against full acceptance of L.G.B.T. people.” Gushee has fully embraced gay rights, and doesn’t simply tolerate gay relationships, but affirms their goodness. Now he has written an extraordinarily important column laying out the future for Christians who reject the Sexual Revolution in its latest form. Excerpts:

It turns out that you are either for full and unequivocal social and legal equality for LGBT people, or you are against it, and your answer will at some point be revealed. This is true both for individuals and for institutions.

Neutrality is not an option. Neither is polite half-acceptance. Nor is avoiding the subject. Hide as you might, the issue will come and find you.

By “the issue” he means those who will ferret out suspected thought criminals, interrogate them, and force them to come clean about their bigotry. Gushee lists all the kinds of people and institutions of American life that embrace homosexuality and transgenderism and, crucially, stigmatize those who do not. It is a sobering list for those who are not on it. And he’s right. He also says that the Republican Party might still be officially on the side of moral traditionalists, but it’s plain that that stance is fast eroding (he’s right about that too). More:

On the Democratic side, not only is LGBT equality now doctrine, sympathy for religious liberty exceptions is drying up quickly. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, making for twelve to sixteen straight years of Democratic control of the White House, it is quite possible that by Supreme Court ruling and federal regulation any kind of discrimination against gay people will have the same legal rights and social acceptance as any kind of racial discrimination. Which is, none.

Openly discriminatory religious schools and parachurch organizations will feel the pinch first. Any entity that requires government accreditation or touches government dollars will be in the immediate line of fire. Some organizations will face the choice either to abandon discriminatory policies or risk potential closure. Others will simply face increasing social marginalization.

A vast host of neutralist, avoidist, or de facto discriminatory institutions and individuals will also find that they can no longer finesse the LGBT issue. Space for neutrality or “mild” discrimination will close up as well.

The way he concludes the column makes it plain that Gushee believes this marginalization and demonization of traditional Christians to be a positive development. Read the whole thing. 

[whole article printed at the end of this article.]

He is absolutely right in his read on the situation in American society. There is no intention on the cultural left of being tolerant in victory, and never was. They are going to bounce the rubble and tell themselves that they are virtuous for doing so. This past week, I saw a Facebook comment in which a liberal said that Livingston Parish, where nearly everyone lost their home to the flood, was once the headquarters of the Louisiana KKK, so to hell with them, they deserve what they get. This is how it’s going to be with us.

I find that even at this late date, it is difficult to get ordinary Christians, including pastors, to understand the reality of what’s coming. You should believe David Gushee. He has done us all a favor here. He and his allies — that is, the entire American establishment — are going to do everything they possibly can to eliminate any place of retreat. When people say that if the Left has its way, there will be no Benedict Option places left to retreat to, I agree. That does not mean they will succeed, at least not at first, but it’s just a matter of time. This means that we will need the Benedict Option more than ever. The Ben Op is not about escapism; it’s about building the institutions and adopting the practices required for the church to be resilient, and even to thrive, under harsh conditions. The church will be under unprecedented pressure, legally and socially, to capitulate. But it will be possible to resist, though not without paying a high cost. I talk about how to do this in my forthcoming book.

Denny Burk responds to Gushee’s column here. Excerpt:

We also know that the conflicts ahead will be a proving ground for the faithful. There are many who call themselves Christian now but who will fall away when the conflicts come. When it becomes costly to follow what Jesus says about sexual immorality, some people will deny Jesus’ word in order to avoid the conflict. And that denial will not lead them to Jesus but away from Jesus. The settled conviction to deny Christ’s word is what the Bible calls apostasy (1 Tim. 4:1). Their going out from us to join the opposition will show what they are:

“They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us.” –1 John 2:19

We are preparing ourselves for the heartbreak of these departures. But as they go out, the faithful are going to count the cost of staying in. That is what we are doing right now. And we are praying for the strength and resolve to stand when heat is on. It is not even on our radar screen to consider turning back, as Gushee would have us to do. We are on the narrow way with Jesus, and by the grace of God there will be no going back.

At my church, my fellow pastors and I are trying to prepare our congregation for the days ahead.

This is a time of testing. It will cost you to remain faithful. If you are not preparing for this now (or, if you’re a pastor, preparing your congregation for this), you are behaving foolishly. As Gushee says, “The issue will come and find you.” One of the hardest things that dissidents will face is that when the Thought Police show up at the door, church people like David Gushee will proudly say, “They’re in the basement, officer.”

UPDATE: Andrew T. Walker has some questions for Gushee:

There are good liberals out there that don’t think in such harsh binaries as Gushee. I know many. The question is what type of liberal is going to prevail on this debate.

I have several questions for Dr. Gushee that follow from his column. While I doubt he’ll answer them, they are questions that would offer clarity and understanding on what lies ahead for the future.

• Are Christians who hold to the historical position on sexual ethics engaging in invidious discrimination?

• Are Christians who hold to the historic position on sexual ethics holding the same type of beliefs and engaging in the same types of actions as avowed racists?

• Can there be actual disagreement on this issue that doesn’t impute to the other side the worst possible motivations?

• Can there be a state of mutual respect that allows for different people to reach different conclusions about the purposes of human embodiment?

____________________
Gushee article:

http://religionnews.com/2016/08/22/on-lgbt-equality-middle-ground-is-disappearing/

On LGBT equality, middle ground is disappearing

(RNS) Middle ground is disappearing on the question of whether LGBT persons should be treated as full equals, without any discrimination in society — and on the related question of whether religious institutions should be allowed to continue discriminating due to their doctrinal beliefs.

It turns out that you are either for full and unequivocal social and legal equality for LGBT people, or you are against it, and your answer will at some point be revealed. This is true both for individuals and for institutions.

Neutrality is not an option. Neither is polite half-acceptance. Nor is avoiding the subject. Hide as you might, the issue will come and find you.

This is a substantial change. The landscape is dramatically different even from when I began working on my book on this subject in the summer of 2014.

Legal changes are certainly playing a role. The 2015 Supreme Court decision mandating recognition of gay marriage in all 50 states was obviously important.

But most visible institutions of American life had abandoned discrimination against LGBT people before that. Today, these same groups are increasingly intolerant of any remaining discrimination, or even any effort to stay in a neutral middle ground. As with the fight against racial discrimination in the 1960s and 1970s, sexual-orientation and gender-identity discrimination is rapidly being rejected by society.

Institutions where full LGBT equality is mandatory now include any entity associated with the federal government, including the military and the civil service.

And the vast majority of the education sector, its schools, trade groups, accreditors and staff, both because of the values of most educators and because of federal regulations.

And most clinical, medical and helping professions, associations and leaders.

And most titans of corporate America.

And most of the media and entertainment business, including its most visible celebrities.

And most of the nonprofit and civil society sector, including former longtime holdouts like the Boy Scouts.

And most of the sports world, including its famous athletes.

And many state and local governments and their leaders.

And the vast majority of America’s secularists; minorities in many other American religious communities; and majorities in some of these religious communities.

Over against this sweeping trend in favor of full LGBT equality and nondiscrimination stand America’s most conservative religious communities and their leaders, together with localities and states most affected by such conservative religiosity, and a weakening but still powerful contingent of activists, lobbyists and Republican Party stalwarts.

I have been a participant in the effort to encourage Protestant religious conservatives, generally known as fundamentalists and evangelicals, to reconsider their position voluntarily. The same conversation is happening in almost every U.S. religious community.

The most receptive are those who have personal skin in the game; that is, LGBT people raised in conservative religious families and churches, and the friends and family members and leaders who love them.

Experiencing the suffering oneself — or a loved one’s or a parishioner’s — is the major path into theological reconsideration. Many have found their way to a new view along this path. But many remain closed.

Indeed, as of now, the majority of conservative religious institutions, including congregations, denominations, publishers, parachurch organizations and colleges, are responding to today’s sweeping social changes by digging in their heels — even against profound and pained internal opposition from their own dissenters.

These institutions and their leaders are interpreting pressure to reconsider as pressure to succumb to error, or even heresy.

They are interpreting social changes toward nondiscrimination as mere embrace of sexual libertinism.

They are attempting to tighten doctrinal statements in order to tamp down dissent or drive out dissenters.

They are organizing legal defense efforts under the guise of religious liberty, and interpreting their plight as religious persecution.

They are confident that they have the moral high ground, and from their remaining, shrinking spaces of power they still try to punish those who stray from orthodoxy as they understand it.

Surely the events of this political year offer this contingent no comfort.

GOP primary voters had at least a half-dozen conservative religious candidates to choose from, but instead picked Donald Trump.

Marking their continued influence, the GOP platform retained all the old anti-gay boilerplate. But openly gay speaker Peter Thiel received a warm embrace, and Trump himself spoke in defense of LGBT people.

On the Democratic side, not only is LGBT equality now doctrine, sympathy for religious liberty exceptions is drying up quickly. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, making for 12 to 16 straight years of Democratic control of the White House, it is quite possible that by Supreme Court ruling and federal regulation any kind of discrimination against gay people will have the same legal rights and social acceptance as any kind of racial discrimination. Which is, none.

Openly discriminatory religious schools and parachurch organizations will feel the pinch first. Any entity that requires government accreditation or touches government dollars will be in the immediate line of fire. Some organizations will face the choice either to abandon discriminatory policies or risk potential closure. Others will simply face increasing social marginalization.

A vast host of neutralist, avoidist or de facto discriminatory institutions and individuals will also find that they can no longer finesse the LGBT issue. Space for neutrality or “mild” discrimination will close up as well.

Sometimes society changes and it marks decadence. Other times society changes and it marks progress. Those who believe LGBT equality marks decadence are being left behind.

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http://goop.com/the-mysteries-of-the-thyroid/

The Mysteries of the Thyroid

When Dr. Alejandro Junger first introduced us to Anthony William more than a year ago, we were immediately taken by his readings: He can scan the body from afar, and with the help of “Spirit,” explain what ails or does not, whether it’s a benign growth near the liver, an over-taxed adrenal system, or a rare blood disorder that might become a nuisance. What’s even more compelling is that his explanations for what’s actually going on are rooted in common sense, and he proposes simple, nature-rooted remedies, like prebiotic blueberries (according to William, unwashed, wild-crafted fruit and berries will become a well-known concept), Spirulina, and iodine. The iodine is particularly interesting, because William works with a lot of clients who are struggling with auto-immune disease, i.e., a class of mystery illnesses with no known root cause and a lot of devastating symptoms. For many, the implication that your body is confused and attacking itself feels like the most unholy instances of sabotage. And according to William, it is simply not true: Your body does not attack itself, it is attacking pathogens that have burrowed deep into your organs, i.e., a long-lasting virus with systemic and far-reaching implications. And, as he explains below, there are many things to do about it.

The Truth about Hashimoto’s, the Autoimmune Confusion, and How to Reclaim Your Thyroid

by Anthony William

Millions of people deal with mysterious weight gain, hair loss, fatigue, brain fog, hot flashes, cold hands and feet, brittle nails, dry skin, restless legs, insomnia, impaired memory, depression, eye floaters, muscle weakness, perimenopause and menopause symptoms, anxiety, dizziness, tingles and numbness, ringing or buzzing in the ears, and aches and pains. Are you one of them? If so, you may be living with a thyroid condition. 

Thyroid disease is still widely misunderstood. Even if you’ve been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, hypothyroidism, or another thyroid issue, chances are extremely high that you’re not getting the most effective treatment—because without true insight into what causes thyroid illness, medical communities aren’t yet able to offer remedies that heal the underlying problem. And if you’ve been tested for thyroid issues and the results have come back normal, you could still be suffering with an under- or overactive thyroid gland and not know it—because thyroid testing is not yet entirely accurate.

In two or three decades, medical communities will have the tests and the answers to offer you true relief. If you’re suffering right now, though, I doubt you feel you have twenty or thirty years to wait. You’ve already waited long enough. You’ve struggled long enough. You’ve been patient long enough. The time has finally come to arm yourself with the truth, to learn the answers about what’s been holding you back—it’s the first great stage of healing.

Autoimmune Confusion

To begin with, we have to be aware of what thyroid disease isn’t, and that means clearing up the autoimmune confusion. When it comes to medical understanding of chronic illness—particularly autoimmune diseases such as Hashimoto’s—we must keep in mind that one day, we’ll look back at the present as a moment in history. Science’s hallmark is that its study develops over time to allow for a deeper, richer, truer understanding of our world. New experiments improve upon old ones; clear insights replace mistaken hypotheses. So what may seem like the forefront of rational thought today could one day be considered out-of-date as new facts come to light. This is the perspective we have to bring to analyzing modern-day medical theories: some will stand the test of time; others won’t.

Currently, the autoimmune theory proposes that in certain conditions, a person’s immune system becomes confused and starts attacking part of the body. In the case of Hashimoto’s, patients are told that the immune system mysteriously produces antibodies that target and damage the thyroid gland as though it were a foreign presence. This hypothesis will not hold up over time. Why? Because it’s not the real answer.

“Once medical science finally taps into the underlying truth about autoimmunity—that it’s not the body attacking itself—the study and treatment of thyroid disease and other chronic illnesses will be able to advance in leaps and bounds.”

What medical research has not yet uncovered is that the body never attacks itself; it only goes after pathogens. Antibodies are signs that there’s a virus (or sometimes bacterium) in the body that the immune system is putting all its energy into fighting off. This process of a pathogen invading cells and the body working to fight off that pathogen creates inflammation. However, the pathogens that cause this physical response are usually undetectable to doctors—by the time a virus has started to cause chronic illness in a patient, it has usually burrowed so deep into that person’s organs that the virus doesn’t show up on blood tests—so it appears to be a bodily malfunction and gets labeled as autoimmune.

You’ll hear from some sources that autoimmune responses happen when your body is defending itself against a trigger (such as a pathogen or gluten) and becomes confused in the process, unable to tell the difference between a foreign presence and your own body tissue. This is not how triggers work. Any antibody activity is because those antibodies are going after the virus, not your own body.

It’s also important to keep in mind that while science has advanced in its understanding of many aspects of physical function, the thyroid gland remains largely a mystery. There isn’t much more medical insight into the thyroid today than there was 100 years ago, which makes it that much easier for medical communities to label thyroid conditions as autoimmune—because it’s difficult to assess what’s wrong with an organ if the organ itself is a mystery, and “autoimmune” is a convenient tag for “we don’t know what’s wrong with you.” It’s not doctors’ fault that any of this is the case. Doctors and other practitioners are heroes who selflessly devote their lives to helping others. They just haven’t yet been handed the best diagnostic tools or framework to determine what’s truly going on with their patients who suffer from Hashimoto’s, Graves’, and other autoimmune diseases. Once medical science finally taps into the underlying truth about autoimmunity—that it’s not the body attacking itself—the study and treatment of thyroid disease and other chronic illnesses will be able to advance in leaps and bounds. For healthcare professionals and patients who want to move forward now, read on.

What Thyroid Disease Really Is

In over 95 percent of today’s thyroid disorders, including Hashimoto’s and even thyroid cancer, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the cause. (The other 5 percent of thyroid problems come from radiation exposure due to chest X-rays, dental exams, and/or plane travel.) Which is to say, it’s not your own immune system that’s causing hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid), thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid), or nodules, cysts, tumors, and tissue damage to the thyroid gland. It’s EBV.

As you can read about in my book excerpt “Epstein-Barr Virus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Fibromyalgia,” which previously appeared on goop, the virus goes through four stages. In the first stage, EBV lives mostly dormant in the bloodstream, quietly building its numbers. In Stage Two, the EBV springs to life and causes mononucleosis, meanwhile seeking out a home in the infected person’s organs (typically the liver and/or spleen), at which point it may go back into dormancy. Stages One and Two can each last for weeks, months, or years, and a person may be completely unaware that she or he even has the virus; the only symptoms may be a brief and mild scratchy throat with some tiredness.

“This small gland in the neck functions much like a data center for the body, with its own memory system that holds intelligence on how to keep the body in homeostasis.”

Then comes Stage Three of EBV. At this point, the virus becomes highly active—and destructive—and now takes up residence in the thyroid. The virus picks the thyroid because it’s a star of the endocrine system. This small gland in the neck functions much like a data center for the body, with its own memory system that holds intelligence on how to keep the body in homeostasis. It uses this memory of homeostasis to transmit radio-like frequencies (not yet detected or measured by medical science or research) that delegate tasks and responsibilities to multiple body systems and organs. When EBV enters the scene, this ideal functioning gets thrown off, which in turn throws off the entire endocrine system. To compensate and power the body, the adrenal glands pump out excess adrenaline, which is one of EBV’s favorite foods. The virus feasts on the adrenaline in order to get stronger, multiply, and go after its ultimate target: the nervous system.

So in essence, thyroid illness can be a precursor to EBV-caused neurological conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and multiple sclerosis—which is all the more reason why, if you’re struggling with thyroid issues, you want to stop EBV before it can develop into something worse.

Thyroid Symptoms and Conditions—Explained

While all of this viral activity is happening in the thyroid, you may be highly aware that something is amiss—and even have received a thyroid-related diagnosis—or you may not know that thyroid issues are throwing your life out of balance. That’s because as in Stages One and Two of EBV, the symptoms of Stage Three EBV (when the virus enters the thyroid) can be either subtle or overwhelming. Much of this has to do with which strain of Epstein-Barr you happen to have; there are over 60 varieties of it, some of them slow-moving and mild, others accelerated and aggressive. As you continue to read, I hope you’ll find insight into your individual struggle so you can solve the mystery and move forward.

Hypothyroidism, Mystery Weight Gain, and Mystery Hair Loss

Once in the thyroid, EBV drills actively and deeply into the gland’s tissue over time, scarring it and impeding its function. In this weakened state, the thyroid can become less effective at producing its thyroid hormones. The name for this condition is hypothyroidism, also known as underactive thyroid or low thyroid. It’s a mild, early-stage case of thyroiditis.

Hypothyroidism can cause body temperature fluctuations, a bit of fatigue, and dry skin—that’s it. What about all the other symptoms typically associated with low thyroid hormone levels? They’re symptoms of the EBV that’s infecting the thyroid, not low levels of thyroid hormones. Aches and pains, muscle weakness, memory issues, mood changes, and more: these are viral symptoms, not a result of hypothyroidism.

Mysterious weight gain is a common symptom that leaves many people beyond frustrated. You’re watching what you eat, you’re exercising regularly, and the number on the scale keeps going up. You might have heard that this is a result of a hypothyroid—that you have an underactive thyroid that’s failing to produce enough metabolism-boosting hormones to keep your weight in check. This isn’t how it works. 

What’s really happening is that back when Epstein-Barr was in Stage Two and hiding out in your liver, it weakened the organ and burdened it to the point of creating a sluggish liver. Then, even after the virus moved on to the thyroid, some EBV cells remained in the liver, where they could continue to cause trouble. Plus, EBV’s presence in the body results in the ongoing presence of viral byproducts, dead virus cells, and neurotoxins in the system that give the liver and lymphatic system continuous purifying work to do, so they keep getting strained. All of that and the adrenal glands that are overcompensating for the underactive thyroid flood the liver with excess adrenaline, giving it even more of a toxic load. It’s the resulting overburdened, sluggish liver and lymphatic system that are behind a hypothyroid patient’s tendency to have difficulty losing weight or to gain pounds without control. So both the hypothyroid and the weight gain are caused by the virus; it’s not the hypothyroid itself causing the weight gain.

“It’s the resulting overburdened, sluggish liver and lymphatic system that are behind a hypothyroid patient’s tendency to have difficulty losing weight or to gain pounds without control.”

It’s worth noting that even if haven’t been diagnosed with a thyroid condition, a viral infection of the thyroid and the effects I just described could still be behind your struggles to lose weight. As I mentioned earlier and as we’ll look at in more detail below, thyroid testing isn’t yet what it could be, so a thyroid panel won’t necessarily show if your hormone levels are low. And if you have been diagnosed with a thyroid condition, you’re on medication for it, and you’re still struggling with your weight and wondering why, it’s because the medicine isn’t healing the underlying viral infection, thyroid damage, or liver issue. (More on thyroid medication soon.) 

Mysterious hair thinning and hair loss are also symptomatic of the EBV’s damaging presence. It’s not low production of thyroid hormones that causes clumps of hair to fall out in your hand—it’s excess adrenaline and cortisol. The adrenal glands are the most important glands in the endocrine system; they are the mediators of the body. So as we just looked at, when the thyroid is struggling, the adrenals jump in to produce extra hormones. Once in a while, this would be fine. When the thyroid is constantly struggling due to viral infection, though, and the adrenals are constantly filling in for them, the repeated floods of stress chemicals are hard on the body and can cause hair to thin.

Hyperthyroidism, Enlarged Thyroid, and Graves’ Disease

In some cases, instead of causing an underproduction of thyroid hormones, EBV prompts the thyroid to overproduce them. This is called hyperthyroidism—and the diagnosis that many people with hyperthyroidism receive is Graves’ disease, an illness tagged as autoimmune that leaves far too many patients feeling that their bodies have let them down. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Graves’ disease is not a result of the immune system becoming confused and attacking the thyroid. 

Rather, Graves’ disease and hyperthyroidism occur because a particular strain of EBV—one that’s a bit more aggressive and fast-moving than the strains behind hypothyroidism—causes an assault on the thyroid, which prompts the gland to overcompensate by rapidly creating new cells and tissue. This extra thyroid tissue produces extra thyroid hormones, resulting in the symptoms of bulging eyes, enlarged thyroid, swelling in the throat, a bit of fatigue, and temperature fluctuations. As with hypothyroidism, most of the symptoms associated with Graves’ (such as sweating, high blood pressure, and nervousness) are virus-related and not a direct result of an overactive thyroid.

Inflammation and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis

When EBV targets the thyroid gland, the immune system reacts in full force, and the result is inflammation. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to invasion and/or injury. Have you ever gotten a splinter, and soon the skin around it got red, hot, and puffy? That’s the body responding with inflammation to a foreign object (invasion) that’s causing cell damage (injury). The same goes for the thyroid. If EBV enters your thyroid tissue, your immune system immediately knows that it’s present (invasion) and causing cell damage (injury), so the gland becomes inflamed. This can come with the feeling of a sore throat, pressure in the throat, or a funny feeling in your neck.

If you’ve been diagnosed with thyroiditis, understand that it’s a sign of your immune system working hard for you, doing everything in its power to fight the virus; it’s not a malfunction of your body. The inflammation is not occurring because “autoantibodies” are being produced by your immune system to go after your own cell tissue. The antibodies that show up on thyroid tests are present because there’s a battle going on in your thyroid between EBV cells and your immune system. That is, your immune system is producing the antibodies to seek out and destroy the Epstein-Barr virus that’s causing thyroid damage.

“The antibodies that show up on thyroid tests are present because there’s a battle going on in your thyroid between EBV cells and your immune system.”

Let’s think about the name “Hashimoto’s thyroiditis” for a moment. While it may seem big and frightening and cast a shadow over your life, if you break it down, it will lose some of its power over you. “Thyroiditis,” first of all, means inflammation of the thyroid—that’s it. And “Hashimoto” is nothing more than the name of the doctor who first identified the issue. While this was a landmark discovery at the time, an important realization that gave people who were suffering a name for their struggles, it only identified the symptoms, not the underlying cause—and the discovery took place over a century ago. Now it’s time to take the next step.
It wasn’t until the publication of my first book, Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness and How to Finally Heal, which includes a chapter on hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, that the truth finally reached the public about EBV as that underlying cause. It’s time to reclaim your power and understand that Hashimoto’s is a label and not a judgment or life sentence. The reason for your suffering does not come from within. Your immune system is not going haywire or out to get you. It’s this virus—this invader—that’s causing the damage, making you feel miserable, and holding you back in life. Your body just needs the proper support, which I’ll describe soon, to triumph over the virus.

Nodules, Cysts, and Tumors

If you’ve ever been diagnosed with a thyroid nodule or cyst, you’ve probably found the diagnosis a bit unsettling. After all, none of us wants to hear that we have a growth, much less one that appears mysteriously with no answer about how to make it go away. Here’s the truth about these lumps: they are yet another sign of your body working hard against the Epstein-Barr virus.

When the immune system isn’t able to destroy the virus altogether, it goes with its fallback option: attempting to wall off the virus with calcium. That’s what thyroid nodules are: calcium prisons for EBV cells. Unfortunately, this doesn’t get rid of the virus, because (1) most of the EBV cells evade getting walled off, and (2) those EBV cells that do get trapped make themselves at home within the calcium walls, continuing to feed off the thyroid and drain it of energy. If the virus cells prosper too much in the nodule, they can even transform it into a living growth—a cyst—which puts even more strain on the thyroid. 

“When the immune system isn’t able to destroy the virus altogether, it goes with its fallback option: attempting to wall off the virus with calcium. That’s what thyroid nodules are: calcium prisons for EBV cells.”

If you’ve experienced larger thyroid tumors that are cancerous, know that these are caused by rare, aggressive forms of EBV. Their formation usually indicates that a person also has toxins such as elevated heavy metals and pesticides in their organs.

Meanwhile, all that calcium walling off the virus has to come from somewhere. If someone with a thyroid nodule or cyst doesn’t have enough calcium in the bloodstream because she or he isn’t eating enough calcium-rich foods, then the immune system will extract calcium from the bones, which can lead to osteopenia and eventually osteoporosis.

Viral Symptons, Perimenopause, and Menopause

While any of the above is happening with your thyroid, it’s very common to experience other symptoms of EBV, too, including depression, anxiety, dizziness, brittle nails, cold hands and feet, ringing or buzzing in the ears, eye floaters, aches and pains, restless legs, insomnia, tingles, and numbness. Many of these symptoms are frequently mistaken for separate issues, which can leave a person highly discouraged, feeling like she or he has multiple health problems, when in reality, it all has to do with the same underlying viral cause.

Further, the hot flashes, weight gain, hair loss, memory loss, fatigue, and brain fog that result from EBV infection are mistaken for side effects of perimenopause or menopause. A woman may receive that “change of life” diagnosis alongside a thyroid diagnosis or instead of one, either way giving her the sense that her body is rebelling and aging her rapidly. As I described in detail in the Medical Medium chapter “Premenstrual Syndrome and Menopause,” though, menopause is not meant to be a painful, uncomfortable process, and in fact marks the beginning of slowed-down aging. 

“It just so happened that historically, the incubation period for EBV was such that it started to infect the thyroid and cause symptoms at the same time a woman’s menstrual periods were stopping, and the coincidence was mistaken for causation.”

The classic “menopause” symptoms I listed above are not actually due to menopause. They’re signs that something else is amiss in the body, often due to radiation or pesticide exposure—or the virus Epstein-Barr. It just so happened that historically, the incubation period for EBV was such that it started to infect the thyroid and cause symptoms at the same time a woman’s menstrual periods were stopping, and the coincidence was mistaken for causation. These days, with more aggressive, faster-developing strains of EBV showcasing themselves, women are coming down with hypothyroidism earlier in life, and now it’s not uncommon for 25-year-olds to receive diagnoses of perimenopause. This is a mistake that leaves so many young women in an identity crisis, feeling like they’re growing old before their time, when in reality, the problem is viral—and manageable.

This is critical information for you to hold close, because current medical explanations of hormonal imbalance and thyroid disease leave countless patients feeling that their bodies aren’t to be trusted. They feel betrayed, faulty, weak—when in fact, it’s just the opposite. Your body fights for you. Your body is on your side. Your body loves you unconditionally. It just happens to be up against a pernicious adversary—one that can be tamed with the right approach.

Connecting to this truth and all of the above knowledge about what thyroid illness really is and how it works is the first step in healing from any thyroid condition. You didn’t cause your illness. Your body’s not letting you down. You’re not to blame. You can move forward. You can heal. It changes everything when you know this.

Thyroid Blood Tests

In order to assess the thyroid’s performance, the most straightforward approach would seem to be the common thyroid blood tests. The accuracy of these tests is, unfortunately, inconsistent. To begin with, thyroid hormone readings can vary widely depending on the time of day and the patient’s stress levels. It’s much like the “white coat syndrome” many people experience when walking into a doctor’s office and getting their blood pressure taken. Just sitting there under observation can get your palms sweaty and raise your blood pressure above normal levels, throwing off the accuracy of the readings. 

In the same way, sitting in an exam room about to have your blood drawn can get your adrenals pumping, which completely changes your blood chemistry—because suddenly, adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) and cortisol (also known as hydrocortisone), both steroids, flood the bloodstream in preparation for fight-or-flight, disrupting homeostasis in the process. These high adrenaline and cortisol levels can make it look on a blood test like you’re producing more than enough of the thyroid-related steroids T4, T3, and TSH—whether you truly are or not. Or that adrenaline and cortisol may be saturating your brain and putting your pituitary gland, which produces the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), into overdrive—again, throwing off blood test results from what they’d look like normally. 

“I’ve seen people get a thyroid blood test one week, go back to get blood taken a week later for another purpose, and have the thyroid profiles on each come back with completely different numbers.”

Even if the sight of a needle doesn’t bother you at all, a disruption of homeostasis could still be affecting your blood chemistry. If you’re someone who experiences chronic stress, then you may live with constant elevated adrenaline and cortisol, or you may even have adrenal fatigue, a condition I explain in-depth in my book. With adrenal fatigue, the adrenal glands can produce adrenaline and cortisol erratically, sometimes flooding the bloodstream and sometimes holding back. In this case, your adrenals may be overactive when you’re getting your blood drawn even if the doctor’s office is your favorite place in the world, and so, again, the results can be inaccurate.

I’ve seen people get a thyroid blood test one week, go back to get blood taken a week later for another purpose, and have the thyroid profiles on each come back with completely different numbers. Assessing the results of just one thyroid test is too limiting; it means that doctors can unknowingly miss if a patient has a thyroid condition. With blood pressure, many doctors and nurse practitioners have learned that the best way to deal with inaccurate blood pressure measurements is to take a few readings over the course of an appointment and average them. A similar approach would help with thyroid testing—although what it would really take is a thyroid test once a day for 30 days, and then an average at the end of the month.

Still, this wouldn’t solve everything, because the tests themselves are antiquated. A few decades from now, they’ll be where they need to be. Until then, healthcare professionals and patients have to deal with thyroid tests that are too broad in range and not attuned to the subtle hormonal shifts that can signal a thyroid condition. Millions of women unknowingly walk around with hypothyroids that wouldn’t register on today’s tests. Sometimes, it takes months or years of living with the condition for it to progress to the point that a lab can detect it. In that meantime, a person has to live with worsening health and no answers.

None of which is to say that you should write off thyroid tests. You just need the background above so you can interpret the results with perspective. If you’re going in for thyroid testing, ask to be tested for TSH, free T4, free T3, and thyroid antibodies. Reverse T3 testing is currently a fad that’s not worth dwelling on. While it does reflect genuine problems, it can pick up on so many at once that it’s hard to know what any result means. It’s fine to have your doctor order the test; it just may not help you pinpoint much. And when looking at the results of any thyroid antibodies tests, remind yourself that if antibodies show up, they’re due to viral activity in your thyroid—not a mistaken response by your body—and if antibodies don’t show up, this doesn’t mean EBV isn’t present in the thyroid. Like the others, it’s a test that’s still in progress.

Thyroid Medication

Some advanced medical professionals have caught on to the limits of thyroid testing. They’ve noticed patients who present with classic hypothyroidism symptoms and whose thyroid panels come back in the normal range. These doctors put the patients on thyroid medication anyway, and sometimes, the patients will start to feel better. Finally being taken seriously and heard like this is progress for thyroid patients. Medication also sometimes gives a little more energy, mental clarity, and improved sleep to those patients whose thyroid panels do indicate hypothyroidism. Many others don’t feel relief on thyroid medication.

What we have to keep in mind is that whether a person feels better, worse, or the same on thyroid medication, it is not prescribed for the thyroid itself—it does not heal the thyroid. Rather, these medications, made from synthetic or desiccated animal thyroid, are offered on the theory that they’ll fill in for the hormones that a patient’s body is having trouble producing or converting. What really happens is that the medications’ mild steroid effects give patients partial relief from their low-grade viral infections, and that’s all. 

“What we have to keep in mind is that whether a person feels better, worse, or the same on thyroid medication, it is not prescribed for the thyroid itself—it does not heal the thyroid.”

Many patients are not aware of this. They think that because they went to the doctor and received a prescription to treat their thyroid symptoms, the prescription is treating the problem itself. Meanwhile, the EBV can continue to damage the thyroid (and cause other worsening symptoms), and the thyroid disease can continue to progress. If you take medication for a hypothyroid, you’ll still have a hypothyroid, and you’ll still have EBV, unless you take the express measures we’ll look at below to get rid of the virus and care for your thyroid. This explains why you can still be gaining weight, losing hair, feeling fatigued, and generally suffering even after you’ve gone on medication for thyroid issues. It’s a common experience for millions of people: They’re diligently taking their medication every day, and even though that medication is causing thyroid test results to indicate normal hormone levels, all the while, these people’s thyroids are getting worse over the years, because no one knew to look for the underlying issue and address the real cause. 

If You Don’t Have a Thyroid Anymore

If you’ve had all or part of your thyroid surgically removed, or if you’ve undergone a radioactive iodine treatment to destroy the gland, there’s a critical detail you need to know: Your body still believes you have your entire thyroid. You must consciously connect to this truth, because it’s your body’s way of helping you survive, adapt, and heal; it means that the rest of your endocrine system works as it’s meant to, in a state of homeostasis, and continues to support the thyroid.

Why would you want your body to continue to support the thyroid gland when it’s not there anymore? Because even if you heard that your surgery removed the gland entirely or your radioactive iodine treatment killed it off completely, the overwhelming probability is that you still have functional thyroid tissue left—and even if you have as little as one percent of your thyroid tissue, it can still produce a small amount of thyroid hormones, which is beneficial to your healing, as well as send out the radio-like frequencies that promote homeostasis. With the proper care, that tissue can regenerate just enough so that your thyroid function improves over time. So as you read the next section on thyroid health, don’t feel left out. Get in the mindset that you have a thyroid that’s there and working hard for you, one that you want to protect and nurture, and you’ll be on your way to healing.

Addressing Thyroid Conditions

If your thyroid is in need of help, you’ve come to the right place. Below are foods, herbs, and supplements that can help restore a damaged thyroid, strengthen the other glands of the endocrine system, and lower the viral load specifically within the thyroid—as well as insight into iodine and a warning about a food trend that’s derailing many who suffer with thyroid issues.

Given that thyroid testing isn’t definitive, you may still be unsure if you’re living with a thyroid condition. The good news is that it doesn’t hurt to help protect your thyroid. Whether it turns out that Epstein-Barr is targeting your gland and causing your symptoms, or there’s another reason you’re suffering, supporting your thyroid is not only great for your endocrine system, it’s also very beneficial for your overall health.

Either way, I recommend that you consult with your doctor about this information to come up with the best individual plan for your health. You may also find it helpful to read Medical Medium, where I offer more insights on healing from EBV, thyroid issues, and dozens of chronic illnesses. 

“Goitrogenic” Foods

Cruciferous vegetables such as kale, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, collard greens, and more have gotten a bad name lately. So have other completely innocent foods such as peaches, pears, strawberries, and spinach. Don’t believe the hype that these foods that contain so-called goitrogens are harmful to the thyroid. 

The concept of goitrogens—that is, goiter-causing compounds—has been blown way out of proportion. In the first place, none of these foods contain enough goitrogens to be a health concern. Secondly, the goitrogens present in these foods are bonded to phytochemicals and amino acids that stop the goitrogens from doing harm. Even if you ate 100 pounds of broccoli in a day (which is impossible), the goitrogens still wouldn’t be a concern.

Your thyroid actually relies on these foods; they contain some of the nutrients that the gland needs the most. So don’t pay this goitrogenic food fad any mind! Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a major opportunity for health.

Concerns About Iodine

Many people are concerned about iodine in relation to hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. To understand whether iodine is beneficial or detrimental for someone with an underactive and/or inflamed thyroid, we have to think about it in the context of what’s causing the thyroid problem in the first place: the virus Epstein-Barr. 

Iodine is a disinfectant, effective at killing both viruses and bacteria. You’ve probably used it or heard of it being used as an antiseptic to clean wounds and prevent infection. When it’s in someone’s system, either through diet or supplementation, iodine applies this same germ-fighting ability. This also means that someone with an iodine deficiency is more vulnerable to bacterial and viral infections. So if you have a thyroid infection of EBV that’s causing hypothyroidism and/or Hashimoto’s, you don’t want to be iodine deficient, because it can translate to greater EBV susceptibility. 

“The popular concern is that the iodine causes an overproduction of thyroid hormones that the body sees as foreign invaders, which prompts the immune system to attack the thyroid. This theory is incorrect.”

The reason there’s confusion in this area is that when iodine reaches the thyroid, it kills off virus cells at an accelerated rate, which can in turn temporarily elevate inflammation. Those patients for whom EBV is only causing a mild hypothyroid can often do well on iodine, which is beneficial, because it can help tame the virus before it advances to the point of causing Hashimoto’s. On the other hand, too much iodine at once for someone with a high level of thyroiditis (EBV infection of the thyroid) can be overwhelming, because it starts killing off so many virus cells so quickly that the inflammatory response can be quite high and uncomfortable.

This inflammation is often mistaken for an autoimmune response. The popular concern is that the iodine causes an overproduction of thyroid hormones that the body sees as foreign invaders, which prompts the immune system to attack the thyroid. This theory is incorrect; it leaves out the most important factor of all—that Hashimoto’s is the result of a viral infection.

One of the keys for people with hypothyroidism is to avoid being completely deficient in iodine. (Avoiding iodine deficiency can also help prevent breast cancer.) This doesn’t have to mean iodine supplementation; the iodine in sea vegetables such as dulse, kelp, and bladderwrack can be very helpful for combating a thyroid infection. If you’re wondering if iodine supplementation is right for you, talk to your doctor.

Healing Foods and What to Avoid While Getting Better

Among the most healing foods for thyroid conditions are Atlantic dulse, wild blueberries, celery, sprouts, cilantro, garlic, asparagus, radishes, kale, parsley, butter leaf lettuce, spinach, hemp seeds, coconut oil, Brazil nuts, kelp, and cranberries. Variously, they can kill EBV cells, provide micronutrients, repair thyroid tissue, reduce nodule growth, flush toxic heavy metals (which feed EBV) and viral waste, and boost production of thyroid hormones. For maximum benefits, consume at least one cup each of wild blueberries, celery, cilantro, and asparagus daily.

No matter what food belief system you subscribe to, whether paleo, vegetarian, or the like, it’s a good idea to remove eggs, dairy products, pork, canola oil, soy, corn, and gluten from your diet while you’re dealing with a thyroid issue. It’s not that these foods cause inflammation, which is the theory you might have heard. Rather, these foods feed EBV, and then the EBV creates inflammation. With these foods in your diet, the virus can continue to grow and prosper, which means that your thyroid and viral symptoms can continue to stick around.

Healing Herbs & Supplements

• Zinc: Kills EBV cells, strengthens the thyroid, and helps protect the endocrine system.

• Vitamin B12 (as adenosylcobalamin with methylcobalamin): repairs and strengthens the areas of the nervous and endocrine systems that have been damaged by EBV.

• Ester-C: Strengthens the immune system and flushes EBV toxins from the liver.

• Spirulina (preferably from Hawaii): Provides critical micronutrients for the thyroid.

• Cat’s claw: Helps reduce EBV cells.

• Bladderwrack: Provides easily assimilated iodine and trace minerals for the thyroid.

• L-tyrosine: Helps increase the production of thyroid hormones.

• Ashwagandha: Bolsters the thyroid and adrenal glands and helps stabilize the endocrine system.

• Licorice root: Kills EBV cells in the thyroid and aids the adrenal glands.

• Lemon balm: Kills EBV cells in the thyroid and dampens nodule growth.

• Manganese: Critical for production of thyroid hormone T3.

• Selenium: Stimulates the production of thyroid hormone T4.

• EPA & DHA (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid): Fortifies the endocrine system and nervous system. Be sure to buy a plant-based (not fish-based) version.

Case History: Stronger Than Ever

Sarah’s friends lived in awe (and a little jealousy) of her ability to take on the world with energy that never flagged. On weekends, she and her boyfriend, Rob, would head to the mountains to hike, and then she’d still want to go out with her girlfriends when she got home. She could eat whatever she wanted and never gain a pound. Rob, who worked as a trainer, loved to show her off at the gym where he worked.

When Sarah was 36, she noticed that she’d put on an extra seven pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. She could barely fit into her good jeans. At first it seemed like it might just be bloating from her menstrual cycle. But when her period passed, she was still struggling to button her waistband.

She decided she’d go full-throttle at the gym and burn off the extra weight. She also cut out all carbohydrates from her diet.

Sarah’s girlfriend Jessica told her she was happy to see her weight go up a little. “You look much healthier,” she said. Still, Sarah had been more comfortable at her lower weight and knew it wasn’t normal to get heavier out of nowhere. She also knew that Jessica had other reasons for being happy to see Sarah fill out—namely, a history of envy.

In the second week of Sarah’s extra workout and no-carb regimen, she noticed that the number on the scale hadn’t gone down, but her energy had dropped. Rob, who’d never had a problem keeping weight off, told Sarah she just wasn’t applying herself enough at the gym. He also put her on protein shakes to try and build her muscle mass.

Yet Sarah’s weight was going up at a rate of a pound every two weeks, and her energy just kept dropping. She’d once been 115 pounds. The day the scale hit 130, she called her doctor.

After a full workup, Dr. Kiernan explained that Sarah’s thyroid hormone level tests showed that her thyroid levels were elevated, indicating hypothyroidism. Sarah asked what was making that happen. She’d always been healthy, she said, she ate a healthy diet, and she exercised all the time. Dr. Kiernan answered that it was just something that could happen as people aged.

This didn’t compute for Sarah. “Aging” wasn’t part of her vocabulary. She was still in her 30s, she wasn’t even married yet, she didn’t have children—and already she was getting the ailments of an older person?

Still, she took the thyroid medication that Dr. Kiernan prescribed, continued her frequent workouts, and kept avoiding carbs. Yet her weight continued to increase by two pounds every month. When she reached 140 pounds, she called her mother to vent about how disappointed Rob was in her weight gain. He no longer liked to be seen at the gym with her, because he said her body reflected poorly on his skills as a trainer. Rob had stopped inviting her out with his friends and colleagues. The one time she’d been out with them in recent weeks, he’d said a defensive, “Don’t worry about Sarah. She’s just been eating too many carbs,” at the beginning of the evening.

Her mom groaned over Rob’s behavior and said to Sarah, “I know I’ve told you about Anthony before and you haven’t called him. I really think now’s the time.”

In the initial scan, Spirit helped me confirm that Sarah did have a thyroid problem—she was just on the edge of early hypothyroidism. She wasn’t yet at the point of full inflammation of the thyroid, but she was headed there. I hurried to explain that the condition wasn’t a symptom of getting older. A virus—specifically Epstein-Barr—was causing Sarah’s problem.

Right away, we altered Sarah’s diet. We took out hormone-disrupting foods such as eggs and dairy, and minimized her animal protein to once daily. We also increased her consumption of antiviral fruits and vegetables, including papayas, berries, apples, mâche, mangoes, spinach, kale, sprouts, Atlantic dulse, cilantro, and garlic. For supplements, we concentrated on lemon balm, chromium, zinc, and bladderwrack. With this protocol, we were able to reduce the viral load on Sarah’s thyroid, and it returned to producing its normal level of hormones.

At the beginning, Rob was suspicious of this new diet. He thought fruit smoothies with spirulina powder for breakfast, a spinach salad with orange and avocado for lunch, salmon with vegetables for dinner, and fruit for snacks in between was too much sugar and not enough protein.

Within the first two weeks, though, Sarah had lost four pounds. And within the first month, a total of eight pounds. The second month, the weight loss was more gradual, but her energy was increasing. As an added benefit, she felt like she was building muscles she’d never even felt before.

After three and a half months, she was back to 115 pounds—with more muscle than the last time she’d been that weight.

Meanwhile, Sarah told Dr. Kiernan she wanted to wean off the thyroid medication. Though it went against what he’d been taught, Dr. Kiernan couldn’t deny that Sarah’s thyroid was restoring its normal function, and Sarah was coming back to life before his eyes. Soon, Sarah was off the medication entirely.

Now when Rob had gym clients who were having trouble losing weight, he told them all about his girlfriend’s weight-loss story (implying he’d been the one to help her), and put those clients on cleanse diets like Sarah’s.

Rob apologized to Sarah for his past behavior and hinted that he might be popping the question soon. Sarah told me that while Rob is easy on the eyes, she’s not so quick to commit to him after seeing the way he treated her when times got hard. They remain unmarried.

Moving Forward

If you’ve struggled with your health, I understand what you might have suffered. I can only imagine what you’ve gone through. It’s not your fault; you didn’t deserve any of it. You didn’t create your illness or imagine it. You’re not a bad person. You can heal and move forward.

From the simple act of reading this far, you’ve started yourself on the path to healing. The power you lost when you thought your body was letting you down is now back in your hands. Trust in your body’s ability to get better and support you has already begun to flow back to you. 

Know that I stand behind you, that I believe in you, that as you take care of your health, you’ll be a beacon of light to others on the healing path. I can’t wait for you to experience what’s next. I wish you every blessing.

For over 25 years, Anthony William has devoted his life to helping people overcome and prevent illness—and discover the lives they were meant to live. What he does is several decades ahead of scientific discovery. His compassionate approach has time and again given relief and results to those who seek him out. He is the host of the weekly radio show “Medical Medium” and the New York Times best-selling author of Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness and How to Finally Heal.

The views expressed in this article intend to highlight alternative studies and induce conversation. They are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of goop, and are for informational purposes only, even if and to the extent that this article features the advice of physicians and medical practitioners. This article is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

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