This is one of the most shocking pieces of legislation being pushed in the US:
There are countless reasons why so many of us warned about the mega-dangers of a Biden presidency, and why the NeverTrumpers, especially the “Christian” ones have blood on their hands. I could offer a lengthy list here of all these incalculable damages that are and will be inflicted on America with Sleepy Joe in the White House.
But one of the worst is the so-called “Equality Act”. I and others have long been warning about this dreadful bill, and we have often mentioned how this one item alone would be enough to persuade all those concerned about liberty and human rights to NOT vote for the Democrats.
Sadly however too many clueless wonders – including too many biblically-illiterate Christians – decided the radical, hyper-left Dems were somehow preferable to Trump and his ‘mean tweets’. Now we are all suffering greatly. And if this bill goes through, we are all toast.
A number of recent pieces on this are worth drawing your attention to. Here are four of them. Ryan Anderson knows all about how horrifically bad this bill is, having just had his 2018 book on transgenderism banned by Amazon. See my review of this first-class volume here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/02/21/review-harry-became-sally-ryan-anderson/
Ryan points out how “Biden’s Equality Act is a danger to women’s and conscience rights”. He writes:
The Equality Act would sacrifice the hard-won rights of women, while privileging men who identify as women. If it becomes law, such men would have a right to spend the night in battered-women’s shelters, disrobe in women’s locker rooms and compete on women’s sports teams — even at K-12 schools.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the text: “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.” So you can keep separate facilities for men and women, but you have to redefine what men and women are. Likewise, you can reserve certain jobs only for men or women — think TSA agents doing pat-downs — but you have to let a man who identifies as a woman do strip searches on women.
The act would also massively expand the government’s regulatory reach. The Civil Rights Act, it seems, is too narrow for today’s Democrats. The Equality Act would coerce “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting or legal services,” along with any organization that receives any federal funding.
That’s more or less everyone and everything. Religious institutions are very much included. Under the Equality Act, religious schools, adoption agencies and other charities would face federal sanction for upholding the teachings of mainstream biology and the Bible, modern genetics and Genesis, when it comes to sex and marriage. https://nypost.com/2021/02/21/bidens-equality-act-is-a-danger-to-womens-and-conscience-rights/
Michael Brown also has written on this. His piece, “Agnostics, Orthodox Jews, Catholics and Evangelicals Agree: ‘Equality Act’ is Dangerous to Human Rights,” is also well worth reading. He writes:
As summed up by evangelical leader Mat Staver, “HR 5 is a bill that pushes the LGBT agenda on all people and targets Christianity in every area of life — including the church. There will be an increase of instances where Christians and others are being punished unless they violate their beliefs in order to comply with such a law. And that is just the beginning of unconstitutional chaos in America.”
In short, not only would religious beliefs be trampled in the name of “equality,” but simple human rights — most specifically, women’s rights — would be trampled as well. (As Chart and Menken wrote, “Women, check your ‘privilege.’”) That’s why many people of faith and non-faith are uniting together against the so-called Equality Act.
He concludes:
It’s one thing to stand against the mistreatment of those who identify as LGBTQ (or anything else). It’s another thing to turn the world upside down, throw out common sense and logic, and trash the religious liberties of the majority of the nation in the name of equality.
As expressed by the Catholic bishops, “Human dignity is central to what Catholics believe because every person is made in the image of God and should be treated accordingly, with respect and compassion. This commitment is reflected in the church’s charitable service to all people, without regard to race, religion or any other characteristic.”
Consequently, “It means we need to honor every person’s right to gainful employment free of unjust discrimination or harassment, and to the basic goods that they need to live and thrive. It also means that people of differing beliefs should be respected. In this, we wholeheartedly support nondiscrimination principles to ensure that everyone’s rights are protected.”
The expansive reach of LGBTQ norms will be imposed on everyone, putting men into women’s changing rooms, boys onto girls’ sports teams and pedophiles into daycare centers. I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not.
Noncompliant religious and nonprofit schools will lose tax exemption, and schools will lose accreditation, which means they could not accept student loans and students would not be accepted into most graduate schools. The coverage of the bill includes church and college overnight stays with youth and/or students, dorms, sports, restrooms, locker rooms and showers.
Churches, synagogues and mosques will be forced to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs with respect to LGBTQ behavior. The Senate version defines the “Q” in LGBTQ as “Queer,” and this is where the “Equality Act” goes from disturbing to reprehensible.
“Queer” includes not only lesbian, gay, bi, transsexual and transvestite behaviors, but also a host of “paraphilias,” which includes nearly 550 sexual perversions. “Paraphilias” include every perverted proclivity and behavior – and specifically includes “minor-attracted individuals,” aka pedophiles.
Rod Dreher is also greatly concerned about this bill. He quotes some of those I have quoted, and then finishes his piece with this strong warning:
If you expect orthodox Christianity — as distinct from the false church of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — to survive all this, you had better be drawing in and digging down in a Benedict Option way of living. And you had better start preparing yourself, your family, and your community, Kolakovic-style, for the coming persecution, once we are declared “domestic terrorists” because we will not conform. If you think I’m being an alarmist here, then tell me, where is the line you would draw, beyond which you know that persecution is upon us? www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-queering-of-young-america-benedict-option-live-not-by-lies/
Finally let me draw upon a recent piece by Andrew T. Walker of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He says this:
The Equality Act contains a metaphysical revolution in its pages, and it seeks the evangelization of the West. The old order was one with an ethic of objectivity, reason, fixed nature, authority, and boundaries, where organic connections and family relations were seen as guiding, normative, and persuasive, with anything opposed to these as transgressive. The revolution well underway is to make all of these metaphysical fixities not only wrong, but harmful. Thus, in the Equality Act’s telling, anything that does not champion expressive individualism or limitlessness, or derive its existence by government fiat is, well, oppressive. We are witnessing, in real time, the final displacement of a Christian account of the universe by a wholly secularized one.
The Equality Act is an assault on the Christian imagination, and this is where its long-term consequences are most dire and calamitous. It aims to reconfigure not only the foundation of family life and biological connections to gender, but to catechize, inculcating a different way of conceiving one’s place and orientation to the world. Moral imaginations are guided by normative constraints, which give them definition and direction. Ideally, a human imagination ought to comport with what is good, true, and beautiful. To educate the moral imagination is to seek a shared imagination, rooted in a shared account of the world, and therefore binding and persuasive to all of the citizens beholden to it.
And he concludes:
There cannot be order in society without the recognition of truths that make obtaining order possible, and there is no truth without which order flows. The Equality Act stands against these truths and promises the fulfillment of a progressive eschaton, relying on the urgency of the self for its scaffolding. My own ethical scaffolds are based on truths over thousands of years old. They have never had to cater to the spirit of the age, for they are grounded in the very strata of creation. They are oriented toward human flourishing, and I will cling to them at all costs so that the next generation might be preserved to see their communities endure in moral prosperity, as their Creator has always intended. www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-equality-act-is-farewell-to-a-christian-metaphysic/
This bill is a massive threat to all that we value and cherish. But the sad thing is, it need not have come to this. A Trump re-election would have put a major obstacle in the way of this and other nefarious bits of legislation. Now all true Christians will be even more at risk. And much of this is due to all those NeverTrump woke believers.
As I said, they really do have blood on their hands.
Update
The House of Representatives has just passed the Equality Act, 224-206. It now heads to the US Senate. Please pray, and if you live in America, please contact your Senators ASAP.
I fear as usual the sheeple will do nothing! Oh we will raise our voices and rabble rouse and rattle our sabers at them but in the end that is ALL we will do. Th will to fight, truly fight, is long gone. Too many wouldn’t pick up a gun to fight for their life much less their faith. The body as a whole is too afraid of losing all they have to fight for faith. The good life has spoiled us and now we are scared. I’m sure many will rationalize their refusal to fight even say God would want them to submit. Maybe even delude themselves with something about being a secret agent for God and only pretending to go along with stuff but fighting from within. Our spirit to actually fight may be dead but our imaginations are very much alive.
There comes a point in every nation when people have no choice but to take up arms and fight but sometimes the nation neuters them first. Bread and Circuses have always been effective. Decades of public school brainwashing are effective too. Add false flags to preempt anything and you have a docile compliant populace who might grumble and complain but won’t dare do anything meaningful or effective against you. In the East they have nothing so they risk nothing in the west we have much and refuse to risk it. Most of America would qualify as rich on a global income scale. We say “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Maybe if today’s church didn’t have hippie Jesus guiding it instead of biblical Jesus we could something.
Compromise has always been part of America even now we will compromise to keep what we have. We might as well just burn the pinch of incense and get it over with because that is just what this act does burn incense to the rainbow people.
It is tiring you feel like a ghost no-one sees in Christmas past shouting your lungs out for someone to do something and they can’t hear you. It’s bad enough when the ship hits the iceberg and everyone panics it is worse when the ship is going down and everyone is going on as normal.
“Iceberg dead ahead!” what did you say something?? “Iceberg dead ahead!” Huh?? Are you talking to me??? “Kim Kardashian’s bottom dead ahead!” Where where??? The state of our countries priorities.
Thank you, Bill, for being our nation’s watchman on the wall.
Some short-sighted readers of your warnings about President Biden’s so-called Equality Act might shrug and say, “All very interesting, Bill. But what’s it got to do with Australia?”
To which I would say: it has everything to do with Australia.
I have not the smallest doubt we will soon see a big push for Australia to adopt every single provision of America’s Equality Act.
These days it doesn’t take long before misguided overseas laws are faithfully emulated in Australia.
Take, for example: 1) same-sex marriage; 2) LGBT propaganda in the classroom cleverly camouflaged as concern about bullying and suicide; 3) permitting – even encouraging – gender-confused youngsters to undergo irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments in a futile bid to change their biological sex; and 4) the draconian counselling censorship laws recently enacted in Queensland, the ACT and Victoria.
In each of these campaigns, Christian misgivings have been deliberately misrepresented as hate speech, and Christian people themselves maligned as bigots, bullies and haters.
I notice that the writers you quote in your article represent a number of different Christian denominations: Ryan T. Anderson (Catholic), Michael L. Brown (a Jewish-born Christian Pentecostal), Mat Staver (Southern Baptist), Rod Dreher (Eastern Orthodox), and Andrew T. Walker (Southern Baptist); yet they all speak with one voice to warn Americans of what lies in store for them.
Readers of your CultureWatch blog should study closely your commentaries on America’s so-called Equality Act. The Act’s provisions are coming to Australia – sooner than we might expect.
Many thanks john. Yes exactly right. We are in the same boat here.
This 5-minute video of Ron Paul taking on the trans activists is well worth watching and sharing:
I just saw the small win in the UK: ‘The government has agreed to change its bill allowing ministers to take maternity leave, so that it uses the term “mother” rather than “person”.
I contacted my two Senators, but sad to say, one of them is a sponsor of the bill and his response was filled with boasting about his accomplishment as sponsor of this diseased bill. The other Senator is just as diseased in his thinking. They and this administration will continue to pave the way for the coming antichrist. Their lawlessness and defection from truth is remarkable to witness! Plus, Those who claim to be Christian, but support this lawlessness…!…even more remarkable to witness.
Well done Chris. many thanks for trying.
In reading the U.S. “Equality Act” the thought came to me that I have never in my life come across so much deceit in one document, it is essentially lies from start to finish, yet the Democrats want to make it into law.
My major concern is not that the proposed law would be universally applied because I believe everyone knows that would result in an inevitable backlash. My main concern is how the proposed law will be selectively applied to those who have enough morals to not submit to these false beliefs. The potential harm is catastrophic.
Of course the same deceitful concepts are found in the Victorian anti-conversion bill with its accusation of pernicious prayer and that young minds are not “plastic”, as the science literature puts it, or susceptible as most parents know it to be. These are deceitful, unscientific and immoral concepts and need to be vehemently opposed by all right-thinking people.
Quite so Michael.
One may be forgiven for suspecting that the meaning of “equality” in the minds of some political ideologues now is short-hand for “affirmative action” for certain allegedly oppressed social cohorts. One is reminded of the words of Titus 1:15, q.v..
Thanks Bill, your article reminds me of Esther and the Jewish Purim Festival that is happening now. If there is not a time that the Bride of Christ (Esther) is to rise up, it is now so that the spirit of destruction (Haman) will hang itself on its own gallows. We must not let all this antichrist confusion rise up anymore we must call it out and abolish it. We and the American people have had enough. It’s time to hang (literally) all those self-appointed impostors trying to indoctrinate our children so that the truth is exposed and we can get back to living normal lives where we can rejoice again.
Excellent article, Bill. So, so dreadful, the situation we are in.
Thanks for telling it how it is.
I fear as usual the sheeple will do nothing! Oh we will raise our voices and rabble rouse and rattle our sabers at them but in the end that is ALL we will do. Th will to fight, truly fight, is long gone. Too many wouldn’t pick up a gun to fight for their life much less their faith. The body as a whole is too afraid of losing all they have to fight for faith. The good life has spoiled us and now we are scared. I’m sure many will rationalize their refusal to fight even say God would want them to submit. Maybe even delude themselves with something about being a secret agent for God and only pretending to go along with stuff but fighting from within. Our spirit to actually fight may be dead but our imaginations are very much alive.
There comes a point in every nation when people have no choice but to take up arms and fight but sometimes the nation neuters them first. Bread and Circuses have always been effective. Decades of public school brainwashing are effective too. Add false flags to preempt anything and you have a docile compliant populace who might grumble and complain but won’t dare do anything meaningful or effective against you. In the East they have nothing so they risk nothing in the west we have much and refuse to risk it. Most of America would qualify as rich on a global income scale. We say “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Maybe if today’s church didn’t have hippie Jesus guiding it instead of biblical Jesus we could something.
Compromise has always been part of America even now we will compromise to keep what we have. We might as well just burn the pinch of incense and get it over with because that is just what this act does burn incense to the rainbow people.
It is tiring you feel like a ghost no-one sees in Christmas past shouting your lungs out for someone to do something and they can’t hear you. It’s bad enough when the ship hits the iceberg and everyone panics it is worse when the ship is going down and everyone is going on as normal.
“Iceberg dead ahead!” what did you say something?? “Iceberg dead ahead!” Huh?? Are you talking to me??? “Kim Kardashian’s bottom dead ahead!” Where where??? The state of our countries priorities.
Thank you, Bill, for being our nation’s watchman on the wall.
Some short-sighted readers of your warnings about President Biden’s so-called Equality Act might shrug and say, “All very interesting, Bill. But what’s it got to do with Australia?”
To which I would say: it has everything to do with Australia.
I have not the smallest doubt we will soon see a big push for Australia to adopt every single provision of America’s Equality Act.
These days it doesn’t take long before misguided overseas laws are faithfully emulated in Australia.
Take, for example: 1) same-sex marriage; 2) LGBT propaganda in the classroom cleverly camouflaged as concern about bullying and suicide; 3) permitting – even encouraging – gender-confused youngsters to undergo irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments in a futile bid to change their biological sex; and 4) the draconian counselling censorship laws recently enacted in Queensland, the ACT and Victoria.
In each of these campaigns, Christian misgivings have been deliberately misrepresented as hate speech, and Christian people themselves maligned as bigots, bullies and haters.
I notice that the writers you quote in your article represent a number of different Christian denominations: Ryan T. Anderson (Catholic), Michael L. Brown (a Jewish-born Christian Pentecostal), Mat Staver (Southern Baptist), Rod Dreher (Eastern Orthodox), and Andrew T. Walker (Southern Baptist); yet they all speak with one voice to warn Americans of what lies in store for them.
Readers of your CultureWatch blog should study closely your commentaries on America’s so-called Equality Act. The Act’s provisions are coming to Australia – sooner than we might expect.
Many thanks john. Yes exactly right. We are in the same boat here.
This 5-minute video of Ron Paul taking on the trans activists is well worth watching and sharing:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/rand-paul-blasts-levines-trans-radicalism/
I just saw the small win in the UK: ‘The government has agreed to change its bill allowing ministers to take maternity leave, so that it uses the term “mother” rather than “person”.
Thanks to the House of Lords: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-56204865
Thanks Steve.
I contacted my two Senators, but sad to say, one of them is a sponsor of the bill and his response was filled with boasting about his accomplishment as sponsor of this diseased bill. The other Senator is just as diseased in his thinking. They and this administration will continue to pave the way for the coming antichrist. Their lawlessness and defection from truth is remarkable to witness! Plus, Those who claim to be Christian, but support this lawlessness…!…even more remarkable to witness.
Well done Chris. many thanks for trying.
In reading the U.S. “Equality Act” the thought came to me that I have never in my life come across so much deceit in one document, it is essentially lies from start to finish, yet the Democrats want to make it into law.
My major concern is not that the proposed law would be universally applied because I believe everyone knows that would result in an inevitable backlash. My main concern is how the proposed law will be selectively applied to those who have enough morals to not submit to these false beliefs. The potential harm is catastrophic.
Of course the same deceitful concepts are found in the Victorian anti-conversion bill with its accusation of pernicious prayer and that young minds are not “plastic”, as the science literature puts it, or susceptible as most parents know it to be. These are deceitful, unscientific and immoral concepts and need to be vehemently opposed by all right-thinking people.
Quite so Michael.
One may be forgiven for suspecting that the meaning of “equality” in the minds of some political ideologues now is short-hand for “affirmative action” for certain allegedly oppressed social cohorts. One is reminded of the words of Titus 1:15, q.v..
Thanks Bill, your article reminds me of Esther and the Jewish Purim Festival that is happening now. If there is not a time that the Bride of Christ (Esther) is to rise up, it is now so that the spirit of destruction (Haman) will hang itself on its own gallows. We must not let all this antichrist confusion rise up anymore we must call it out and abolish it. We and the American people have had enough. It’s time to hang (literally) all those self-appointed impostors trying to indoctrinate our children so that the truth is exposed and we can get back to living normal lives where we can rejoice again.
Excellent article, Bill. So, so dreadful, the situation we are in.
Thanks for telling it how it is.
Thanks Shirley.