Pro-LGBT Equality Act alarms conservatives, feminists: Women’s rights ‘will cease to exist’
Not only conservative organizations, but even feminists and one homosexual activist are warning against House Democrats’ “Equality Act,” which they fear will squelch free speech and endanger religious freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
The conservative Heritage Foundation summarized the threats posed by the bill, noting its potential for “substantial harm.” Heritage warned, “It would force doctors who do not agree with SOGI [Sexual Orientation Gender Identity] ideology to violate their consciences” and “compel speech for all Americans with ‘preferred pronoun’ policies” and “destroy women’s and girls’ sports by forced inclusion of biological men and boys,” among other effects. “Many of these concerns have come to fruition in the 24 states that have already implemented bills similar to H.R. 5,” it said.
Gay rights advocate Greg Angelo wrote at the Washington Inquirer: “Don’t be fooled by the name: The Equality Act is legislation that would compromise American civil rights and religious liberty as we know it. All reasonable Americans, especially gay Americans who support pluralism and tolerance, should oppose it.” Advising that the Equality Act features almost no exemptions for religious liberty, Angelo noted that the nonprofit status of faith-based educational institutions could be in jeopardy. Federal funding for Catholic Charities could be eliminated if the organization should continue to adhere to Catholic teachings. Also, businesses whose owners refuse to participate in same-sex “wedding” celebrations could be forced to do so.
Writing that the “Equality Act” would also take “the drastic step of amending the Civil Rights Act,” Angelo wrote that for African-Americans, the “Civil Rights Act is more than mere legislation” and “holds a sacred place in our nation’s history” because it righted the wrong of racial segregation. He noted that while the NAACP supported same-sex “marriage,” it has been silent about the Equality Act.
Angelo is a former president of Log Cabin Republicans, a group that advocates for LGBTQ people within the Republican Party.
The bill received heavy support from Democrats, as well as three Republicans: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, John Katko of New York, and Jenniffer González-Colón of Puerto Rico.
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, lesbian feminist Julia Beck said on Tuesday that the proposed federal Equality Act would violate all the rights that women have ever sought to secure. She warned that if H.R. 5 is passed, “every right that women have fought for will cease to exist," adding that the bill “is a human rights violation. Every single person in this country will lose their right to single-sex sports, shelters, grants, and loans. The law will forbid ever distinguishing between women and men." Codifying transgender identity into law, she said, would enshrine a false view of sexuality into law, with disastrous consequences.
While admitting that she generally supports the goal of the Equality Act, Beck called the idea that one can change his sex a “myth” that “has gained considerable traction.” She said “sex is a vital characteristic, gender and identity are not.”
Beck suggested that the Equality Act will make dissent from transgenderism illegal and “mandate a belief in a female penis or female testes.” She said, “I believe that the language of gender identity lends itself readily to abusive gaslighting that disguises and distorts women’s ability to describe what is happening,” arguing, “We must be able to name sex.” She also warned that “this would eliminate women and girls as a coherent legal category, worthy of civil rights protection.”
