“If you allow biological men to sleep right next to us at night, to disrobe and change right next to us at night, we’ll brave the cold.”
Homeless women from the Hope Center, a faith-based nonprofit organization in Anchorage, Alaska, knew the trauma associated with opening up the shelter to men would be worse than a night in Alaska’s winter. At the time, in 2019, the women’s shelter faced a lawsuit that accused it of failing to provide public accommodation to a biological man identifying as a woman.
Shelters implement strict safeguards to protect the emotional and physical well-being of vulnerable individuals. Until recently, they have had the discretion to do so, but President Biden’s promised resurrection of the Equality Act endangers that freedom.
With support growing steadily over the past few decades, the most recent iteration of the Equality Act now awaits a vote in the Senate. By amending specific language within the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 2019 Equality Act threatens to handicap faith-based organizations by limiting their discretion in both employment practices and daily operations, including how to accommodate their clients.
The Civil Rights Act section in question currently reads:
Section 3 of the Equality Act proposes adding discrimination or segregation on the basis of “sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity)” to that list.
This change doesn’t affect only transgender discrimination — it prohibits all segregation based on sex. That means homeless and women’s crisis shelters could not ensure separation of biological men and women.
Segregation on the grounds of sex, however, keeps vulnerable women safe. One can imagine the emotional trauma and physical dangers co-ed accommodations pose to sheltered homeless women, the majority of whom have experienced violent abuse in the past. One study found that 92% of homeless mothers have experienced sexual or physical abuse. A recent report detailing sex crimes in intimate facilities (such as bathrooms and locker rooms) suggests that similar crimes could occur in shelters.
Advocates of the Equality Act argue that current policies allow for nonprofit organizations to exercise unjust discrimination, reducing the availability of social services to those in need. Despite the noble intention of equality, forcing faith-based organizations to provide care contrary to their mission will backfire. Forced to compromise their deeply held beliefs, nonprofit organizations will likely cut back their services or cease operation entirely.
Rather than expand help to the needy, the Equality Act would diminish it.
Currently, faith-based organizations bear most of the burden in caring for the homeless, vulnerable, and marginalized. A 2017 study by Baylor University involving 11 major cities found that faith-based organizations provide, on average, 60% of all emergency shelter beds and lead the way in producing positive outcomes for those they serve. The study also linked those outcomes to taxpayer savings of $119 million over three years.
Not only do private, faith-based organizations save the public money, they also require less of it to accomplish better results than their public counterparts. Economist James Rolph Edwards determined faith-based organizations are twice as efficient in using funds, with two-thirds of income directly affecting those in need.
Yet, in the name of the marginalized, the Equality Act threatens to cut off the institution on which charity was built, the ecumenical church, and the faith that drives its continuation. For centuries, religion has motivated and significantly influenced the fields of philanthropy, medicine, and education. Indeed, Christianity is responsible for introducing the concept of universal human dignity that is often taken for granted in the modern era.
Charitable work has always been done by people, not cogs in a social-assistance machine. These are individuals who make considerable sacrifices to aid the poor in their communities. The love that drives these humanitarian efforts is rooted in a deep faith. Forced to ignore something as fundamental as sex, not only faith-based shelters, but also Christian counseling services, Catholic adoption agencies, and even single-sex schools would be unable to fulfill their missions.
The root of this misguided addition to the Civil Rights Act is a fundamental misunderstanding of how charity happens. The stroke of a politician’s pen can’t eliminate prejudice, but it can restrict a faith-based organization’s freedom to deal individually with each case. Local organizations such as the Hope Center know the true need better than anyone because they know the people in need by name. It is this localized decision-making that allows the residents’ voices to be heard and valued.
In the end, the Hope Center won its lawsuit. If the Equality Act passes, though, next winter, they’ll have no choice, leaving many to “brave the cold.”
James Whitford is co-founder and executive director of Watered Gardens Ministries, a Christian nonprofit organization in southwest Missouri. He also serves as executive director of the True Charity Initiative, which exists to champion a national movement of effective, voluntary charity at the most local level.
