Tag Archives: Equality Act

Never Believe The Title Of A Congressional Bill

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the Equality Act, which will be voted on by the House of Representatives this week.

The article reports:

President Biden has promised to unify the nation. But candidate Joe Biden also made campaign promises to the radical wing of his party that would widen our social divides. Guess which promises are being honored.

Witness the so-called Equality Act, which candidate Biden vowed to make a priority and which is set to be voted on by the House this week. What’s the Equality Act? And who could be against equality? Don’t let the name fool you.

The act “updates” the law Congress passed primarily to combat ­racism, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes akin to race. So if you have any reservations about gender ideology — as even many progressives do; just ask J.K. Rowling — you’d now be the legal equivalent of Bull Connor.

Rather than finding common-sense, narrowly tailored ways to shield LGBT-identifying Americans from truly unjust discrimination, the bill would act as a sword — to persecute those who don’t embrace newfangled gender ideologies. It would vitiate a sex binary that is quite literally written into our genetic code and is fundamental to many of our laws, not least laws protecting the equality, safety and privacy of women.

The bill goes out of its way to protect the rights of men who are transgender while infringing on the basic rights of women. The bill gives the men the right to spend the night in battered-women’s shelters, access to women’s locker rooms, and the ability to participate in women’s athletics even at the elementary and high school level. It is a pretty safe bet that this bill, if passed, will not only destroy women’s sports, it will end the opportunity for many women to obtain athletic scholarships.

The article continues:

The act would also massively expand the government’s regulatory reach. The Civil Rights Act, it seems, is too narrow for today’s Democrats. The Equality Act would coerce “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting or legal services,” along with any organization that receives any federal funding.

That’s more or less everyone and everything.

Religious institutions are very much included. Under the Equality Act, religious schools, adoption agencies and other charities would face federal sanction for upholding the teachings of mainstream biology and the Bible, modern ­genetics and Genesis, when it comes to sex and marriage.

They’ll be at risk, because the Equality Act takes our laws on ­racial equality and adds highly ­ideological concepts about sex and gender. But most laws on racism included no religious-liberty protections — unlike, for example Title IX, which includes robust protections for faith-based schools.

Outrageously, the Equality Act explicitly exempts itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Pope Francis would be treated as the legal equivalent of a Jim Crow segregationist.

The only thing equal about the Equality Act is that it makes some people in America more equal than others.

Harming Women In The Name Of Equality

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The law of unintended consequences seems to spend a lot of time in Washington. One of the best recent examples is the “Equality Act” promoted by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. If the Democrats can maintain their majority in the House of Representative and win a majority in the Senate in 2016, they will pass the Equality Act. So what will the Equality Act do? It will allow men transitioning to women to compete in women’s sports in high school. High school women are losing athletic scholarships because they are losing to transgender women in sports events (article here).

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the Democrat Party’s plans for America’s future.

The article notes:

Democrats have made girls’ sports a 2020 campaign issue, but establishment media outlets are keeping their viewers and readers in the dark.

Every Democratic frontrunner has pledged their support of the Equality Act, which would make “gender identity” a protected characteristic under federal anti-discrimination law. Among other things, the bill would force public schools to expand female athletic teams to include biological males who identify as transgender girls.

Every Democratic frontrunner for president has pledged their support for the bill, which passed the House in May with unanimous Democratic support. But when establishment media outlets have covered the Equality Act in relation to the 2020 election, the girls’ sports issue has gone missing.

An Oct. 10 CNN article noted that passing the Equality Act is a “top priority” for the 2020 campaigns of California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but made no mention of the bill’s impact on female sports. CNN’s LGBT town hall the same day included zero questions about transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

The article concludes:

Polling from Morning Consult shows that majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree that male athletes who identify as transgender have a competitive advantage in girls’ sports, a view supported by scientific research on the subject.

Biologically male athletes have racked up victories in female sports.

Two biologically male runners in Connecticut have dominated girls’ high school track in the liberal state, which allows self-identified transgender athletes to compete as the opposite sex. At the NCAA level, a male runner who identifies as transgender won an NCAA women’s track championship in May after previously competing on the university’s men’s team.

Men competing as women harms women’s athletics. It defies science and common sense.

We Need To Pay Attention To What The House Of Representatives Just Passed

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There was a time in the not-too-distant past when you could trust the running of the government to the people you elected and sent to Washington. They were paid to represent you; and as long as they didn’t wander too far off the main path, the system worked. Well, those days are gone. Legislation just passed in the House of Representatives has the potential to make you a criminal just for continuing on in the normalcy of your own private life.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about some of the provisions of the Equality Act just passed by the House of Representatives. Among other things, women and girls would have to allow men claiming they were transitioning to women in their locker rooms and restrooms.

The article reports:

Far from merely expanding civil rights categories, it turns any recognition of the differences between the sexes or any preference for traditional sexual morality into actionable “hate,” creating fertile grounds for lawsuits.

“It is the most dangerous bill to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion that has ever been proposed on a national level,” says Houston Baptist University Prof. Robert Gagnon, an expert in biblical sexual morality. “It will codify into law that you are a bigot, the moral equivalent of a racist, tantamount to being a member of the Klu Klux Klan, who must be shut out of society and, wherever possible, harassed and persecuted for your beliefs.”

In other words, it will criminalize Christianity, an ongoing process that got a big boost from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling on same-sex “marriage.”

This draconian bill passed by a vote of 236-173, with 8 Republicans joining 228 Democrats. Another 16 Republicans and 7 Democrats did not vote.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has actually endorsed it. When did destroying the moral order and paving the way for more lawsuits against businesses become part of the chamber’s mission? Pouring legal acid on a marriage-and-family-based culture will not lead to a more stable society of upwardly mobile consumers. America is only as prosperous as its families are strong.

The article concludes:

Unless we reassert the primacy of natural marriage and natural sexuality, “our battle will be a losing one,” Mr. Smirak writes. “Our churches will end up essentially illegal. Sooner or later.”

MassResistance, a parents-rights group, has compiled a list of likely outcomes. Here’s a tweaked version:

1. It will undermine the civil rights movement that black Americans fought for.

2. Churches will be sued or lose tax-exempt status if they don’t accept LGBTQ behaviors.

3. Schoolchildren will be forced to learn how to engage in destructive LGBTQ behaviors [in California, it begins in kindergarten].

4. Parents who oppose this will be charged with discrimination.

5. Private colleges will lose funding, grants and scholarships.

6. Public accommodations and small businesses will be forced to allow men into women’s bathrooms and vice versa.

7. Business owners will be forced to violate their freedom of conscience.

8. Hospitals, clinics and the armed forces will be forced to offer experimental and harmful transgender treatments — including surgeries.

9. Foster and adoption agencies will be forced to close, as has already happened to Catholic Charities in several liberal cities.

10. Men will displace women in sports events (already happening).

Scenarios like the following case would become common: A Texas father has been charged in a divorce proceeding with child abuse for not “affirming” his 6-year-old son as female. The mother renamed James as “Luna” and makes him wear dresses to school. The father says James is all boy when he visits him, and goes by “James.” The Equality Act would greatly enhance the mother’s insane quest to turn their son into a girl.

The mother also seeks to terminate the father’s visitations and to “require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight,” writes Walt Heyer, a former transsexual, in the Federalist.

Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, describes the pediatric community’s encouragement of sex change and hormones for children as “institutionalized child abuse.”

The Equality Act would federalize such abuse, and religious faith won’t be a shield. Judges will see to that.

The bill is far more dangerous than most people know. It’s about time they knew — and told everyone they can, especially lawmakers.

This bill is the death knell for the family-based society that is America. If your Representative voted for it, please vote him or her out of office.

Taking Away The Freedoms Guaranteed In Our Constitution

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The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Laws passed by Congress and state legislators are supposed to be in line with the U.S. Constitution. However, there is a bill currently in the House of Representatives that not only undermines the First Amendment, it also cancels out The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. H.R. 5 is a nightmare for those who believe in religious liberty and freedom of religion.

The Heritage Foundation lists seven problems with the bill:

1. It would penalize Americans who don’t affirm new sexual norms or gender ideology.

2. It would compel speech.

3. It could shut down charities.

4. It would allow more biological males to defeat girls in sports.

5. It could be used to coerce medical professionals.

6. It could lead to more parents losing custody of their children.

7. It would enable sexual assault. 

All of these problems have already arisen. Please follow the link to The Heritage Foundation to view the details.

The Liberty Counsel posted an article on May 10 detailing one major aspect of H.R.5. The article states:

HR 5, in the U.S. House, and S. 788, in the Senate, misnamed the “Equality Act,” takes the unpreceded step of eliminating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) as a claim or defense to the application of many federal laws. This bill drastically alters religious freedom in all cases, not just those involving LGBT.

For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permits houses of worship to make employment decisions based on religion. This recognizes the essential right for houses of worship to employ those who align with their religious doctrine. The “Equality Act” would abolish this fundamental right. Catholic and Christian churches could be forced to hire atheists. If a synagogue preferred a Jew over a Muslim, it would not be able to raise RFRA as a claim or defense.

RFRA is a federal law that protects religious freedom. Specifically, it “prohibits any agency, department, or official of the United States or any State (the government) from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except that the government may burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person.” 

However, HR 5 clearly forbids raising RFRA as a claim or defense to the application to the “Equality Act” and many other federal laws that would be amended by this bill.

This “Equality Act” extends the federal protections to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy, i.e. abortion. HR 5 applies to employment, housing, rental, public accommodation and more. In addition, the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” will be defined to mean “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition.” In other words, under the terms of this bill, “pregnancy, childbirth or a related medical condition… shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions.” The “Equality Act” also expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services.”

After passing the House Judiciary Committee recently, the “Equality Act” will now go to the House next week and then be sent to the Senate, where the bill number is S. 788.

If you value religious freedom in America, please call your Senator and tell them to vote against this bill. It will probably pass in the House of Representatives, but needs to be stopped in the Senate. If you are not a religious person and don’t think this is a problem, remember that if the government can undo religious freedom, it can also undo other freedoms. You might not be impacted this time, but if this bill passes, there will be more to follow.