Equality Act could criminalize Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
Outside a declaration of war, there is no act of Congress that would negatively affect more Americans than the House of Representative’s recently passed Equality Act, now slated for the U.S. Senate, then the President for his signature. Billed to ban discrimination against “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” it instead enshrines it into the 1964 Civil Rights Act, potentially protecting pedophilia and pederasty under “sexual orientation.”
The ambiguous 13-page Equality Act would give homosexuality, transgenderism, and other perversions of human sexuality and gender the same protections as race or sex in employment, housing, public accommodations, and more. It specifically prohibits religious freedom as a defense. The legislation applies to churches, religious schools, religious hospitals, religious employers, gathering places, sports, all government entities, and more. Christian adoption agencies will be shut down if they refuse to place children with homosexuals or individuals confused about whether they are men or women. That has already happened in states with similar legislation.
It could criminalize Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as their holy writ condemns as sin the behaviors of the LGBT community. As federal law, Alex Newman writes that “churches, synagogues, and mosques will no longer be able to uphold marriage between men and women, or any moral standards on sexuality at all. Counselors of faith will be banned from helping people with unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion. And Christians, Muslims, and Jews will no longer be allowed to seek out counselors to help them deal with those issues. Indeed, under the measure, everyone will have to affirm the LGBT agenda, or face persecution and destruction at the hands of the federal government. Churches will lose their tax-exempt status if they do not submit. Schools will lose their accreditation … and this is just the start.”
The unchurched may say, “This is not my fight.” But it affects them too with respect to abortion, bathroom privacy, and women’s sports! Randolph Jason writes that “By amending the definition of ‘sex’ in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this legislation codifies a fundamental right to an abortion up until the moment of birth.” One minute short of infanticide. By effectively eliminating Hyde protections, it ensures that American taxpayers foot the bill for abortions.
It vastly undermines women’s privacy. “Men who claim they ‘identify’ as women will be allowed to use women’s restrooms, showers, changing areas, and even bunk with women on trips, including church trips,” any man “could simply walk into female facilities under this bill and claim to be a ‘transgender’ who identifies as female,” Newman writes, placing girls and women at risk. “It would even be forced on churches, domestic-abuse shelters, Christian schools, and much more.”
The Equality Act decimates high school female sports and the monumental gains in the sexual revolution of the ‘70s that equalized opportunity for women’s sports. Biological men with more weight, size, and strength, claiming transgender status, can compete with women. According to the National Sentinel, Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube “introduced an amendment at the last minute to the Equality Act that would have preserved Title IX’s protections for female sports teams, but Democrats — the ‘party of women’ — rejected it soundly.” Women’s sports will never be the same. Ironically the Democratic Party, has abandoned 52 percent of the population (women) in favor of the “less than one half of one percent of the population claiming transgender status.” On bathroom privacy and sports, they are not the party of women’s rights.
The real fear for critics of the bill is that it “provides the state with the power to persecute anyone who won’t celebrate any aspect of the LGBTQ agenda … it turns any recognition of the differences between the sexes or any preference for traditional sexual morality into actionable ‘hate,’ creating fertile grounds for lawsuits.” It puts the LGBT community in direct collision with God as defined by Christianity, Judaism and Islam. These world religions recoil from the behaviors of this group. Behaviors, they believe, places them at odds with God and salvation itself. This legislation is equivalent to “pouring legal acid on a marriage-and-family-based culture.” For them, this is war between good and evil.
Instead of equality, it gives legal power largely to opponents of religion who according to Prof. Robert Gagnon of Houston Baptist University, an expert in biblical sexual morality, will “codify into law that you are a bigot, the moral equivalent of a racist, tantamount to being a member of the Klu Klux Klan, who must be shut out of society and, wherever possible, harassed and persecuted for your beliefs.” Thus, according to the Washington Times’ Robert Knight, the Equality Act “is the most dangerous bill to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion that has ever been proposed on a national level.” No wonder the vast majority of religious communities oppose it.
Ironically, the best way to have the LGBT community treated fairly is housed in religion: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Whenever the black sheep of Islam is invited in the room, schism ensues
What garbage. This is easily one of the most bigoted opinions I’ve read in recent months.
Your holier-than-thou attitude is a symptom of being raised and adhering to a one-dimensional view of the world. Your religions authoritarian stance has clearly rotted your brain.