POK has just learned that a Senate Hearing on H.R.5, otherwise known as the Equality Act, is scheduled in the full Judiciary Committee for this coming Wednesday, March 17, at 10am EST. As we reported earlier, the House of Representatives has already passed the Act largely along Party lines. The hearing next week signals that a full Senate vote is likely imminent.

If passed, the Equality Act would quickly, and perhaps irredeemably, alter the social contract that Americans have with each other and with their government. Among other things, it would:

Force employers and employees to conform to, and embrace, subjective gender identities.

Force all places of “Public Accommodation” to open up bathrooms, locker-rooms, and other facilities previously sequestered according to biological sex to people who identify with their opposite sex, regardless of age.

Force hospitals, medical professionals and insurance companies to provide sex-change therapies and surgical procedures without regard to objections based on religious or moral conscience.

Render women’s sports meaningless, as biological men who identify as women demand entry to female competitions.

Destroy faith-based women’s shelters, foster and adoption agencies that insist on “outdated” models of sex and gender.

Marginalize parents and render them incidental to state control of their children on matters of gender dysphoria, sex-change therapies and SOGI (sexual orientation – gender identity) indoctrination. As has already happened in Ohio, parents could lose custody of their children if they refuse to provide them gender transition therapies.

 

The Equality Act could force doctors who oppose abortion to provide such services, depending on how the law is interpreted.

All future legislation, along with corporate, small business, and charitable policies, would be crafted or re-written in gender-neutral parlance and without regard to biological sex in order to avoid incurring censure and penalties.

In summary, the Equality Act would require us to repudiate biological reality to satisfy the demand of people’s subjective identities. As is already happening in California, it would result in an Orwellian world where the terms “men” and “women” and “boys” and “girls” would systematically be stripped from society.

To those tempted to place their hope in the courts, the Equality Act specifically calls out and disclaims the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act of 1993, which was an attempt to help restore the flagging rights of religious people, mainly Christians, to exercise their faith.  Should the Equality Act pass, even this limited protection will be lost. And as last years’ decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia should have taught us,[1] the Supreme Court offers no assurance that it will faithfully act to preserve our First Amendment rights of conscience.

President Biden has already signaled his intention to immediately sign the Equality Act into law in the event of Senate passage. That is why we must act now to try and stop this measure. Please, therefore, take the time to immediately contact your Senator by phone, email, and fax to voice your opposition. Feel free to use the bullet points above in your arguments. Share this page in social media and emails to others like-minded.

Most importantly, pray! This is no time to sit out, or rely on others.

[1]In Bostock, “conservative” Justice Neal Gorsuch found that the word “sex,” for purposes of discrimination protection in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, also included within the meaning of that word the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity.