12 May Oppose H.R. 5, The Equality Act
Americans of every background should oppose the now-pending Equality Act, and let their Senators and their President know they do NOT want this to become the law of the land. (Too late to stop the U.S. House, which is poised to pass it.)
The Equality Act, H.R. 5, would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” (“SOGI”) to the list of groups of people who are protected under the federal anti-discrimination law, Title VII. That 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws discrimination based on inherent characteristics like race, sex, and national origin. Under H.R. 5 the SOGI classification would be added to that list of protected groups, meaning all of the federal protections against discrimination would be afforded to individuals based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The House Judiciary Committee has already passed the Equality Act out of committee, and it is headed to a vote on the floor of the House this coming week (third week of May 2019). With 240+ co-sponsors, H.R. 5 appears headed for passage in the House.
The Equality Act would force everyone to honor the self-proclaimed gender identity of any person, regardless of their DNA, anatomy, sex at birth, or any other obvious and verifiable indicia of gender. While we all feel compassion for those suffering from gender dysphoria, and may agree that adults have the legal right to claim their sexual orientation or gender identity, H.R. 5 would push way beyond protecting the gender choices made by adults. It would force all of society to comply with the worldview and demands of radical gender ideology advocates in countless ways in our culture and daily lives, including extending the SOGI agenda to children.
Here are a few examples of the impact on society, and the grotesque unfairness to women, that would result if this bill should become law:
- Women’s shelters would be forced to admit and house men who claim (self-identify) as women. Nothing like destroying the safety and sanctity of women’s shelters by letting men move in too. (No, nothing in the act requires a doctors’ note or other validation for the gender assertion.)
- Female student athletes who sacrifice social life and time and energy to become the best in their athletic field would be forced to compete against boys who identify as girls, and who therefore must be allowed to participate in the girls’ sports competition. And these boys who self-identity as girls inevitably win the competition against actual girls, because there are inherent differences between boys and girls. (This has already happened numerous times.)
- Employers, especially religiously based employers including charities, schools and religious institutions, would be forced to accept the ideology of the radical aggressive transgender movement, and implement that agenda in their workplace in a whole host of ways. Conversations and teaching by leaders in the Jewish, Christian and other faith traditions about the validity of new-age sexual norms and gender ideology as contrasted with scriptural teachings would be highly suspect at best.
- Schools would be compelled to adopt shared locker room policies requiring girls to shower and change clothes with boys who identify as girls. Parents and students do not want this imposition, but under the Equality Act, schools would have no choice. (This has already happened numerous times.)
- Medical professionals and facilities, and education professionals and institutions, will be policed and subject to litigation. Decisions by doctors and hospitals to decline to perform gender transition surgery and treatments they are morally opposed to will be more closely scrutinized. Similarly, teachers and schools will be forced to honor the gender identity and preferred pronouns of students who proclaim their identity is different than their biology. Litigation will follow. (This has already happened in public schools, numerous times.)
- Parents and families will be undermined and, in some cases, broken as The Equality Act forces acceptance of the new gender ideology. An Ohio judge has already taken a minor girl away from her parents because they declined to authorize their daughter’s gender transition.
- Women’s small business grants could not be reserved for women, as any man identifying (even for a day) as a woman would be entitled to be treated as a woman equally eligible for those grants.
Ironically, protecting women from sex discrimination was one of the primary purposes of Title VII, but this proposed amendment to that law will wipe out protections for women. Liberal and conservative women’s groups oppose H.R 5 because it overrules the protections the law currently affords women.
The Equality Act also impacts abortion law, because in addition to expanding Title VII to cover SOGI, The Equality Act also brings under the protection of that law “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition,” and states that they shall not receive less favorable treatment than other medical conditions. A reasonable reading of this language is that the defunding of Planned Parenthood will become legally prohibited—meaning that the government will not be able to decline to publicly fund abortions.
Beyond all of the other absurd, unintended and intended consequences of H.R. 5, the radical leftist motivation for this law needs to be understood in very plain terms: it is to supplant the Judeo-Christian grounding of American society with secular psychobabble. For all of its history, America has been anchored in biblically based common sense: we each have a God-given identity, including our gender, that is defined for us at birth.
The Equality Act replaces this common sense reality with a brave new world that has no Creator, and yet elevates every person to the role of creator (“I am who and what I say I am today, and I can be something else tomorrow”).
Acknowledging that adult Americans have the freedom to choose their orientation and identity is one thing. Congress imposing radical gender identity ideology by force through legislation on the entire country, is quite another. Congress is way out of bounds in imposing the secular psychobabble worldview on this nation.
Time for all of us to speak up, and just say no to The Equality Act.