equality act

If the Equality Act Passes, Women Will be Vulnerable in Restrooms Across the Country

For women, the Equality Act (H.R. 5) doesn’t provide the fairer sex any additional comfort or protection, instead it strips them away.

If this law passes, women will no longer feel safe while using public restrooms or locker room facilities. The law would allow any man who “identifies” as a woman to use the restroom of his choice, which would open the door for predators to exploit vulnerable girls and women. Here are some examples of what has already happened when the privacy of a single gender restroom or locker room is removed:

  • A man dressed as a woman so he could gain access to a Macy’s department store restroom in order to video women using the facilities. He was arrested on six counts of using a concealed camera for purposes of sexual gratification.
  • After a new law went into effect in Seattle allowing those individuals who believe they are the opposite sex to use the restroom of their choice, a man used it as an excuse to “verbally identify as female” and enter a woman’s locker room at a pool and undress in front of a girls swim team. The man told employees that he had “the right to use the bathroom of his choice under state law.” He was not reported to the authorities because of the protections he was afforded under the law.
  • A registered sex offender, known for dressing up in women’s clothing in order to gain access to women’s changing areas and restrooms, was arrested in Clackamas, Oregon for entering a women’s locker room at an aquatic park. The offender had a long rap sheet with multiple restroom violations and is a known child predator.

Ironically, it seems like the privacy and protection of single-sex bathrooms no longer applies to Americans but is still enforced in other countries throughout the world. U.S. foreign relief organizations, that guide a lot of relief efforts across the world, always create sex-specific sleeping areas, restrooms and shower areas after a disaster or in a refugee camp because of the inherent risk of sexual assault that women and girls face in unsecured or shared-sex facilities.

The New Humanitarian, an independent news outlet founded by the United Nations, wrote about the problems women experience in the slums of Kenya. “(Women) need more privacy than men when going to the toilet or taking a bath and the inaccessibility of facilities makes women vulnerable to rape, leaving them trapped in their own homes.” Is the progressive LGBT political agenda so important that lawmakers are willing to remove common sense and critical protections from women in order to support a deeply flawed social policy? Apparently, the answer is yes.

In many ways, opening up restrooms to all genders is a step back and not a step forward as progressive activists claim. It was revolutionary in Great Britain when Selfridges, a department store, made the decision to open up the first public women’s restroom in Britain. Before Selfridges provided a public restroom, women would have to make shorter trips when shopping or spend much of the day at home because they would not have access to the privacy of a restroom.

Perhaps in the next several years, American women and families will be forced to do the same. That is not progress, but instead creates a culture where women will always wonder if the person in the stall next to them is really a woman or a man who may be using the Equality Act, if it passes, as an excuse to gain access to vulnerable women and girls in a private area.

Email or call your Representative at (202) 224-3121 and let them know that you want to protect girls and women and ask them to vote against the Equality Act. 

The “Equality Act” Would Mark the End of Religious Conscience

The mis-named “Equality Act,” also known by its bill number, HR 5, is due for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives next week. The bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s list of protected classes, but its real impact will be to significantly change America’s legal landscape, as we have detailed elsewhere.

Perhaps HR 5’s most egregious—and intentional—effect will be to eradicate religious conscience as a defense to acts of government coercion that seek to force businesses and religious institutions to comply with the bill’s radical sexual ideology against their conscience. It’s a blatant attempt to drive faith-based entities from the public life of the nation.

How would this happen?

The bill includes a small paragraph toward the end that says this:

“The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 U.S. C. 2000bb et seq.) shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.”

Let’s break down what that innocuous-sounding language really means.

When the federal government forces someone to act contrary to their religious beliefs, that person usually has two defenses: The First Amendment’s religion clause, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, also known as RFRA.

But the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 1990 case that the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections do not apply to protect religious conscience from what it called “neutral laws of general applicability.” That would include nearly any law that doesn’t target religion by name. That court-created loophole in the First Amendment so motivated a bi-partisan Congress at the time that it passed RFRA in 1993 by a voice vote in the House and by 97-3 in the Senate.

RFRA protects all of us, including faith-based entities and businesses (see the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision) from any government action that “substantially burdens religious free exercise” unless it furthers a “compelling government interest” by the “least restrictive means.” Since 1993, 21 states have also adopted RFRAs of their own.

What HR 5 does is to remove—in most cases—the last religious freedom defense available—RFRA—against the imposition of the bill’s sexual ideology across the nation. Wedding vendors like Jack Phillips will be back in court again with no religious conscience defense to support their refusal to create a wedding cake for same-sex nuptials. Employers would have to provide insurance for abortion and so-called “sex-reassignment” procedures. Doctors and nurses and hospitals will have no defense for refusing to provide controversial medicines such as puberty blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones to people suffering from gender dysphoria, or for declining to remove healthy organs from such people in a vain attempt to change their sex.

Yes, there are conscience laws in other federal statutes and agency regulations that currently offer some conscience protection to religious institutions and healthcare professionals, but those won’t last long if HR 5 is passed. In fact, a court one day could rule that HR 5 supersedes any existing federal conscience protection that might otherwise apply.

This conscience-killing bill would relegate the free exercise of religion, guaranteed by the First Amendment, to secondary status outside the public square. For those of us who are concerned that the current anti-Christian worldview we’re witnessing in politics and in the culture is meant to silence the Christian voice completely, the “Equality Act” will become our worst fears realized.

“Equality Act” Discriminates Against Faith-based Adoption Agencies

Before the November 2018 elections, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was then the House Minority Leader, announced that she would make passage of the “Equality Act” a top priority if Democrats took back control of the House. After the Democrats did just that and she was re-elected as House Speaker, Pelosi reiterated her promise, “We will make America fairer by passing the Equality Act to end discrimination against the LGBTQ community,”

Pelosi made good on her promise in March 2019, when she introduced the act in the House. The House version of the Equality Act, H.R. 5, has 240 co-sponsors, while the Senate version, S.788, has 46 co-sponsors. The legislation would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to redefine “sex” and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). The bill similarly amends a number of other federal laws, including the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Government Employee Rights Act of 1991.

While touting the idea of making America fairer, Pelosi consistently fails to explain the discriminatory consequences of this legislation for a variety of different groups. In a previous article, we looked at some of the negative effects on religious freedom – as the legislation labels truths about marriage, family, and men and women to be “discrimination.” And we saw the effects on privacy and safety – especially for women and children – as it opens restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms to those who believe they are the opposite sex.

But there are other harmful consequences from this legislation. In addition to the concerns we’ve already written about, H.R. 5 creates problems for faith-based adoption agencies.

The Equality Act Redefines “Sex”

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination on the basis of “sex,” it was clear what “sex” meant: being male or female. But the Equality Act redefines “sex” to include:

(A) a sex stereotype;

(B) pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition;

(C) sexual orientation or gender identity; and

(D) sex characteristics, including intersex traits.

For modern gender ideologues and their allies, it’s a “stereotype” to believe that there are just two sexes – male and female. It’s a “stereotype” to believe that marriage is the union of a husband and wife. And it’s a “stereotype” to believe that children deserve a mother and a father. Those who act on these truths are, according to the Equality Act, discriminatory.

The Equality Act labels basic truths discriminatory “stereotypes” and elevates sexual confusion to the same status as basic Constitutional rights such as freedom of religion, speech and association.

Faith-based Foster Care and Adoption Agencies

From its very beginning, the church worked to save human lives and to stop the atrocities of abortion, infanticide and infant abandonment. An early Bishop of Rome, Callistus, set up “Life Watches” where abandoned infants were rescued and placed in Christian homes.

The Christian practice of caring for orphans continues today, with Christian organizations helping place children in homes with a mother and father. Oftentimes such groups work with federal, state and local government agencies, helping parents navigate the adoption and foster care systems.

But in states that have passed SOGI non-discrimination laws, numerous faith-based foster care and adoption agencies have been forced to stop their work – because they will only place children in homes with a mother and father. Catholic Charities of Boston refused to comply with a Massachusetts law protecting sexual orientation. The organization asked for a religious exemption, but was denied. It closed its doors in 2006.

That same year, San Francisco Catholic Charities announced that it would end adoption services rather than place children with same-sex couples. The organization was following 2003 guidelines from the Vatican that noted that same-sex unions lack “sexual complementarity” and children placed in such homes “would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood.” Catholic Charities in Illinois, Washington, D.C, and Buffalo, New York have followed suit, ending their involvement in adoption.

Other Christian adoption agencies are fighting to continue their work and follow their beliefs in Pennsylvania and New York. Michigan recently announced a settlement with the ACLU where the state would no longer provide funding to adoption agencies that only place children in families with a mother and father.

The Equality Act has no religious exemptions. In fact, it specifies that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was designed to preserve religious protections, may not be used as a defense for violating the Equality Act. As a federal law, the Equality Act will cause more Christian adoption and foster care agencies to close – or else violate their religious beliefs.