It is customary and politically expedient to name bills in such a way that anyone who opposes their passage risks being regarded a moral leper. Look no further than the “Equality Act,” a bill passed by the House and awaiting its turn in the Senate.
Where is the red-blooded, patriotic American who could stand against “equality,” that shining ideal that puts the callused working man and the rich lounger on the level field of our national imagination? Let’s pray there are lots of them in the Senate, because the word “equality” appears in the title, but the concept is smashed to pieces in the substance of the bill.
The Equality Act comprises 31 pages of social engineering designed to transform countless aspects of American lives, including the most private and intimate. Its tremendous reach is made possible by its central conceit — that the simple fact, understood by toddlers everywhere, that humans (like all mammals) come in two sexes, male and female, can be changed by government fiat.
Instead of the clarity of sex, it proposes a jumble of jargon and wishful thinking about the power of self-definition and the exaltation of sexual proclivity over everything we used to hold sacred, like the innocence of children and the protection of women.
Purporting to bar discrimination against persons with same-sex attraction and those who prefer to present socially as a member of the opposite sex, the bill in fact would create vast mountains of discrimination if made into law.
The first to feel the impact would be women and girls. It is our female sex that makes us women especially vulnerable to unscrupulous men who would physically or sexually abuse us, and also what makes the possibility of a fair physical contest between a man and a woman impossible.
The Equality Act, if made law, would enable any male, by simply declaring himself a woman, to enter private female-only spaces at will, like changing rooms, jails, shelters, and dormitories. Women’s sports, a relatively new historical phenomenon, would cease to exist as soon as males (even those taking estrogen) with their years of testosterone-enhanced muscular and skeletal development could enter women’s contests.
The Equality Act would also make religious Americans a lot less equal than they are now. It specifically exempts itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the protections it affords Americans of faith. Parochial schools would no longer have the right to teach students scientific facts about sex differences — not to mention the ages-old biblical concepts of human creation and the right ordering of sexual relations toward procreation and unity in marriage.
How long before seminaries could be sued for refusing to admit women who identify as men seminarians? For private citizens, the danger of attacks by today’s “cancel culture” are bound to become greater and graver, if the Equality Act becomes law.
In medicine, both patients and doctors would find “equality” a source of trouble. Here is a nugget buried in one of the 31 pages: The refusal to perform or support abortions would be considered “pregnancy discrimination.” If a physician like me, who considers her unborn patients as dignified and worthy as their mothers and fathers, could not refer them for destruction at the hands of an abortionist, she would be guilty of discrimination under the Equality Act.
Here is another: As other countries start to rethink allowing the “transitioning” of children because of the damage caused by puberty blocking and cross-sex hormones, the Equality Act would make transition the only option for American children.
A therapist or psychiatrist would have to immediately send a child with gender dysphoria down the transition chute toward a lifetime of physical and psychological dysfunction. This is especially tragic when we know that more than 80% of minors with dysphoria grow out of their self-rejection with appropriate support. It would be illegal to offer that support, even if the patient and her parents desired it.
As for adults, surgeons would have no choice but to remove healthy uteruses, genitals, and breasts, at the behest of patients suffering from psychological dysfunction, not disease. The Equality Act discriminates against health care workers and their professional judgment, as well as their vocation to cure disease, not cause it.
These are only a few of the ways the proposed bill discriminates against ordinary Americans — it would take a book to enumerate them all. It is shocking to think that the Equality Act passed the House of Representatives when a cursory reading is enough to show that it ought to be named the Inequality Act. Perhaps those who voted for the Equality Act only got as far as the noble-sounding title. Let us hope that the senators can get past the title and into the meat of the so-called Equality Act, and reject discrimination, even when it is portrayed in happy colors.
