Quote:Congress appears to be heading full-steam ahead with the Equality Act, more accurately labeled the “Insanity Act.” As an out conservative gay man, I cannot in good conscience label this bill an “equality” act nor support it. This bill has nothing to do with actual equality for all.

The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as federally protected classes, redefining the word “sex” in the original law to include these definitions. This sounds wonderful on the surface, but will lead to catastrophe.

While I am very happy that more than two-thirds of Americans support LBGTQ nondiscrimination, this bill will not achieve what it aims to do, and will in fact accomplish the opposite in many ways, leaving a long list of victims in its wake.

What do progressive Democrats and their radical gender activist allies actually know about actual LBGTQ rights, other than their pontifications from above? Very little, it appears. I am 100 percent for actual rights for gays, lesbians, bisexual, and trans citizens, and we need solutions to address our rights on both the federal and state levels, but this act goes way, way too far—and in the wrong direction.

This bill will not protect our rights, but destroy them for many members of our communities and society at large. Is gaining federally protected rights for LGBT people, many of which we already enjoy through multiple Supreme Court rulings, worth the price of sacrificing the rights and safety of so many others? No, it is not.

Putting the Sexes Together in Vulnerable Situations
This is already happening with similar requirements pushed by the Biden administration, such as his executive order that requires replacing “sex” in law and regulation with “gender identity.” By codifying this into law, the Insanity Act would ultimately lead to the erasure of women by dismantling sex-specific facilities such as bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons, battered women’s shelters, and other vital female-only spaces. The same would apply to men—men’s facilities, sports clubs, changing rooms, etc. will also disappear.

Mixing the biological sexes in such a way will enable and facilitate sexual harassment and assault. Our ancestors from hundreds, and even thousands, of years ago understood this, but Democrat politicians clearly do not. But the evidence of this is proliferating.

In Canada, Christopher Holbrook is a transgender man who preyed on women at two Toronto shelters. He has been convicted of sexually assaulting a girl as young as five years old. His victims include a deaf and homeless Quebec woman and a Toronto survivor of domestic violence.

If the Equality Act passes, at U.S. women’s shelters trans men like Holbrook will be given access enabling such predation, and the shelters will not be able to stop it. That’s insane.

No More Male and Female
The Supreme Court decision in last year’s case of Bostock v. Clayton County extended protections for LGBTQ people under federal law and prohibits discrimination in the workplace. This new Insanity Act Would apply the same redefinition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which stretches over much more of society than employment.

This bill would require Americans to consider gender identity and even biological sex a personal choice, not an objective fact. This is where this bill completely falls off the rails.

This will turn any recognition of the difference between biological sexes, or any preference for traditional sexual relationships or genders, or even the scientific definition of the two sexes, into potential “hate” crimes. This bill would:

Endanger women’s rights and put millions of women at risk for sexual assault;
Destroy women’s sports and harm men’s sports;
Put gender-confused children at extreme risk, with no alternate paths for them allowed besides cross-sex hormones and genital amputation;
Remove constitutional protections for religious beliefs and freedoms; and
Elevate LBGTQ rights and claims over religious citizens by mandating that an LGBTQ person’s claim wins by default in cases where there is a dispute between the two.
Destroying What It Means to Be Gay
Gay, lesbians, and bisexual members of society would also effectively become an “extinct species” under this bill. That’s because it would enshrine the gender identity agenda that is counter to gay rights.

For decades, we gays preached to the world that we were “born this way,” and that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual “is not a choice.” Lady Gaga’s famous “Born This Way” has been embraced as a global gay anthem. We did not challenge nature or the science of our biology, nor millennia of human history’s distinctions and separations of the two sexes.

Now, that’s turned on its head. For the gender-identity and trans-obsessed crowd, how you were born can now be “changed,” and everything regarding sex and gender is simply a “choice.”

There is a clear difference between sexual orientation, which does not challenge the science and reality of the difference between the biological sexes, and gender identity, which absolutely does. These issues must be treated separately. They are not the same, and often oppose each other.

If being gay means being a man who has same-sex attraction to another man, the Equality Act would make this definition completely defunct. What is now a “man”? Whoever claims to be.

With the passage of this bill, a biological woman could call herself a “man” at will, then join a gay men’s club, gym, sports team, sauna, you name it. If you were ever on a gay men’s cruise, this would be about time to jump overboard.

It’s Not the Right Trying to Erase Lesbians
LGB people used to want it to make it possible to be a lesbian girl to accept who she was, and “come out of the closet” to live her life fully as she chose. It was wonderfully liberating and self-affirming.

But now, the progressive left is telling this same girl that is is not okay to be a lesbian, and that there must be something inherently wrong with her biology. God must have made her wrong. She’s really a boy.

Instead, girls like this are now being pressured to effectively go back into the closet, and transition to become a boy. Transgender ideology pushes girls like this to not accept their biology, attempt to change it with drugs, hormones, and medical procedures, in effect becoming a “straight” boy.

In the process, she will likely become sterile and become many times more likely to commit suicide. The Equality Act would put taxpayer money and programs behind all this.

The idea of “lesbian” is disappearing among girls and young women in the wake of the transgender contagion, and lesbian bars and resorts are now nearly all gone. Men’s gay bars and resorts are following. This transgender and gender identity agenda is the very opposite of gay rights.

People Who Oppose This Aren’t Haters, They’re Sane
This bill would require hormonal and surgical interventions for gender-dysphoric children as well as ideological indoctrination in schools, colleges, and the media. The vast majority of gender-dysphoric children—studies find 80-95 percent—no longer feel distressed by their bodies after puberty. Yet progressive activists continue to push children to act transgender publicly as young as four years old, take puberty-blocking drugs as young as age nine, take cross-sex hormones as young as 14, and get surgery by 18 (or, in some cases, even younger).

All else being equal, this research suggests the most likely outcome for children with gender dysphoria is to grow up to be gay or bisexual—becoming comfortable, in the long run, with the bodies they were born into. The gender identity agenda thus opposes gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights by encouraging gender transition instead of “coming out” as gay and accepting the body and sex you were born into.

Also, remember there’s a multibillion-dollar gender transition industry at stake that the left and their corporate lobbyist pals don’t want to miss out on. Also remember that if you disagree with any of this, under this bill you may face legal action for a “hate” crime.

We need a new approach to this issue that does not include the basket of destruction from this Insanity Act. There is a way forward, but this bill is not it.

Quote:Later this week, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives will vote on The Equality Act, one of President Biden’s promised legislative priorities for his first 100 days in office. While Democrats present The Equality Act as legislation designed to protect LGTBQ people from discrimination, if passed the law would prove devasting to girls and women.

Given the details of the bill, a better name for this monstrosity of a law would be the “Destroy Our Daughters Act.” That’s because the specific harms that await American daughters all flow from the core problem of The Equality Act: Congress is attempting to enshrine in the law a physical impossibility.

It is physically impossible for a male to become a female, or vice versa, and even a world fluent in Orwellian-speak cannot overcome that reality. Yet that is what some in the 117th Congress of the United States proclaims possible in the proposed Equality Act.

“Sex,” the bill says, includes “gender identity,” which the legislation then describes so broadly it is limited only by a person’s imagination. “Gender identity” in the bill means “the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the indiviudals’ designated sex at birth.”

The Equality Act then treats an individual’s self-determined “gender identity” as the individual’s “sex” under the law, and requires Americans to do the same in virtually every aspect of civil society, including public accommodations, public facilities, public education, all federally assisted programs, and employment.

Two substantive provisions of The Equality Act make this redefined reality especially threatening to women and girls. First, The Equality Act provides that “an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”

Under the law, any man or boy claiming a female gender identity could access store dressing rooms, recreational centers’ locker rooms, or school bathrooms. There would be nothing a state, city, school board, or private business could do about this because federal law trumps state law and this federal law defines public accommodations and public facilities so broadly the reach is near-universal.

The second devastating mandate of the Equality Act concerns what is called “bona fide occupational qualification” under Title VII. Title VII prohibits sex discrimination in employment but allows for an employer to make employment decisions based on “sex” if sex is considered a “bona fide occupational qualification.” Sex constitutes a “bona fide occupational qualification” in cases involving intimate care of clients and customers, such as personal caregivers in nursing homes, or chaperones, counselors, or coaches with access to children in locker rooms or during overnight trips.

The Equality Act expressly provides that where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification, employees qualify for such a position based on their gender identity, not their sex. So, under this proposed bill, an adult man who claims a female gender identity may seek and obtain a job that is limited to women applicants because of the sensitive and intimate job functions involved.

Americans should ask themselves: Do they want a man professing a female gender identity employed in a position so intimate that the law allows an employer to limit the job to female applicants? Parents should ask themselves: Do they want a male coach adorned in women’s attire having access to their daughters in the locker room, on overnight trips, and in lodging at summer camps? That is exactly what The Equality Act demands.

While not as horrifying as the emotional and physical risks American daughters would face should this law pass, from a fairness perspective, the Equality Act also threatens to destroy women’s sports.

We are already witnessing the spectacle of muscle-bound boys sprinting past female opponents in track events in states that have allowed an individual’s gender identity to trump sex. This exhibition of the absurd will only grow under The Equality Act, for two reasons.

First, the Equality Act trumps all state laws, preventing states (or school boards) from addressing the issue on a local level. Second, The Equality Act defines “gender identity” so broadly, a male athlete need only declare his identity as “female” and he qualifies to compete “equally” with girls.

The Left Women’s Liberation Front highlights this problem, noting “The bill doesn’t mention individuals with clinically diagnosed gender dysphoria, or undertaking surgical or hormonal transition, thus making clear that self-declared gender identity would be sufficient to claim protected legal status.”

WOLF calls for its members to oppose this legislation, declaring it’s because: “This bill will also end sports programs and scholarships set aside for women and girls. All such programs will have to admit men and boys who identify themselves as women or girls. Such programs will no longer meet their intended purpose of protecting the rights of women and girls by redressing historical inequality of opportunity.”

The end of women’s sports programs is but a patch to the psychiatric, emotional, and physical harm young girls will face if the Equality Act passes and extreme gender ideology becomes the standard.

“The percentage of young people, especially girls, reporting a struggle with gender dysphoria has increased suddenly and dramatically, in an obvious shift from the previously low number of young people identifying as transgender,” notes the Daily Signal. As journalist Abigail Shrier explains in her new book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” there is a contagion especially affecting “teen girls who are struggling with anxiety and depression.”

As Shrier explains, “All across the West, adolescent girls are suddenly identifying as ‘trans’ with friends, clamoring for hormones and surgeries.” The contagion effect will only get worse if Congress passes the Equality Act, with more young girls seeking experimental treatments that have lifetime consequences.

America’s girls deserve better than to be sacrificed on the altar of the extreme transgender movement that holds the support of powerful politicians and corporate media. To date, all but a few parents have remained silent, either out of misplaced compassion for those declaring themselves transgender or out of fear of public shaming.

But if average Americans don’t rise up now and make their voices heard, it will soon be too late—and their daughters will suffer the consequences.