The House last month passed the Equality Act, a deceptively named bill that claims to secure equal rights but threatens the liberties of millions of people who disagree with the Left’s extremist gender ideology. The bill now moves to a split Senate, where a few centrist members voted in support of it the last time it was introduced. This time, they should rethink the issue and defeat it.
The Equality Act’s purpose is to add to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit housing and workplace discrimination on the basis of “sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” But this is unnecessary because the Supreme Court’s recent decision Bostock v. Clayton County already prohibits such discrimination. The bill’s proponents know this, but they’re using the Equality Act as a front for the much bigger and more dangerous purpose of making the Left’s fanciful and anti-science ideas about sex and gender the law of the land.
Three provisions in the Equality Act prove this. The first is the phrase “gender identity,” which falls under the bill’s protected classes. By including “gender identity” alongside “sex” and “sexual orientation,” the Equality Act essentially eliminates biological sex as a distinct legal category and opens gender-exclusive spaces, such as women’s sports teams and female prisons, to intrusion by biological males.
Under the bill, every federally funded entity, including public schools, would be forced to allow men who say they are women into female-only spaces, such as locker rooms and bathrooms. Women’s shelters, prisons, and sports teams would also be forced to accept men so long as they identified as transgender. This is a serious threat to the physical safety of women, and it also threatens their chances at success, especially in the athletic world.
In Connecticut, for example, a handful of female high school track athletes are in court fighting a school district-mandated policy that forced the girls’ team to allow male competitors who identified as women to compete alongside them. The biological males won 19 girls state championship races in 2019, which cost the biological female runners scholarship opportunities and further competition.
The second big red flag in the Equality Act is a clause that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition.” Because the courts and the federal government have interpreted “related medical condition” to mean “abortion,” the Equality Act could be used to force government healthcare programs and private insurers to cover abortion services. In other words, the legislation is designed to let Washington mandate taxpayer-funding of abortion and force all medical providers, even religious ones, to perform abortions.
With legislation this bad, it is difficult to say any aspect is better than others. But worst of all is the Equality Act’s insidious attempt to delete vital religious liberty protections. The bill would block the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from applying to its provisions, which means people of traditional faith could not protect their beliefs from the Left’s radicalism. Churches and religious schools that require employees not to live in open contravention of their teachings would be stripped of one of their most important lines of defense. Bakers, florists, photographers, and every other person of faith who chooses to withhold services that would make them participate in something they believe to be wrong would be left vulnerable to legal attacks from anyone who might disagree with their beliefs.
The Equality Act is a declaration of war against anyone who dares to speak out against the Left’s wild theories about sex and gender identity. It is an attempt to force the rest of the country to accept a bigoted ideology by making it legally binding and then removing the means by which concerned citizens can object.
The Senate must see the Equality Act for what it is and reject it. No bill that disenfranchises women and strips citizens of legal protection in the exercise of their faith can seriously claim to advance equality or justice. It is shameful that this bill was ever drafted. It certainly should never become law.
