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‘Biology is not bigotry’: House Dems pass sweeping protections for LGBTQ. Here’s why GOP is set to oppose

February 26, 2021 | | Print Article

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On Thursday, the Democrat-led House passed the Equality Act, a bill ostensibly designed to flood the nation with “protections” for gay and transgender Americans.

“The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Jury Selection and Services Act by extending existing protections to sexual orientation and gender identity,” according to The Hill.

“Madam speaker, discrimination is wrong, we all know that. As children, we learn the golden rule: treat others the way you yourself want to be treated. Right now discrimination is a fact of life for millions of LGBTQ Americans,” Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, one of two Democrats who introduced the legislation last week, said before the vote Thursday.

“The fact is that in most states an LGBTQ person is at risk of being denied housing, education, or the right to serve on a jury just because of who they are. That’s why we are here to consider HR 5, the Equality Act. The Equality Act does no more and no less than say LGBTQ people deserve the same rights and responsibilities as all other Americans — most fundamentally the right to live lives free of discrimination,” he added.

Listen:

Despite Cicilline’s lofty rhetoric about being treated fairly, the bill stands virtually no chance of bypassing the 50/50 Senate unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster.

To pass the Senate and be signed into law by President Joe Biden, the Equality Act would require 10 Republicans to cross the aisle. Yet over in the House, only three of 211 Republicans reportedly supported the measure. Even fewer would likely support it in the Senate.

The conservative opposition to the act is rooted in the observations that, by expanding so-called “protections” for the LGBT community, the bill would stomp out already established protections for women and those who subscribe to a religious faith.

The sweeping bill would accomplish this by essentially forcing transgender ideology on the entire public, despite there being vast disagreement over everything from the definition of a man or woman to the legitimacy of, say, “gender pronouns.”

“Is it ‘discrimination’ to insist that young men do not compete against women in sports, for instance? Is it ‘harassment’ to refuse to use — out of conscience or good grammar — newly invented speech codes (‘call me they/them’)? Is it ‘violence’ to insist that men who undergo ‘sex change’ genital surgery are still, biologically speaking, men?” the editors of National Review wondered in a feature published Thursday.

According to the bill’s “most ardent supporters and lobbyists,” the answer is a resounding yes, and that’s apparently a problem — if for no other reason than the fact that, as noted by Rep. Mark Green, a licensed physician, “Biology is not bigotry.”

Speaking on the House floor Wednesday, Green warned specifically of the medical repercussions of the bill being signed into law.

“As a physician, I know firsthand that this bill will force medical providers to surrender sound medical judgment and their sincerely held convictions to politically fashionable dogmas according to the radical activists who seek to enshrine gender identity into federal civil rights law,” he said.

As just one example, he noted that doctors will be forced at veritable gun point to perform “gender reassignment surgery” on children who think they’re of the wrong gender.

“Such procedures often lead to irreversible damage, especially in adolescence, but under the Equality Act, medical providers who object to performing these procedures will face crushing legal liability if they refuse to comply,” Green said.

“As a physician, I took a sacred oath to do no harm and preserve the health of those in my care. If this bill becomes law, many doctors will be forced to go against both their conscience and their medical judgment. Make no mistake: this is a death sentence for medicine. Biology is not bigotry and medicine is not discrimination,” he contended.

Concerns have also been raised over the Equality Act’s stipulations on abortion. The bill would reportedly classify objection to abortion as “pregnancy discrimination.”

“[T]he drafters of the Equality Act have written into the bill a new free-standing prohibition on pregnancy discrimination, shorn of the neutral language found in the original P.D.A., which requires that abortion be treated no differently than other physical conditions,” America, a Catholic magazine, noted.

“The short section reads: ‘Pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition [read: abortion] shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions.’ And so, an institution or individual that provides or funds health care but not abortion (including, one assumes, state governments), would be discriminating on the basis of sex,” the publication added. “Catholic doctors and hospitals would have no recourse to federal conscience protections.”

During his own remarks this week about the Equality Act, Rep. Chip Roy asserted that the bill is nothing but a Democrat Party power grab.

“It forces medical professionals to conduct or assist in performing abortions and perform certain surgeries, administer hormone blockers even if it is against their medical advice, forces employers to cover sexual assignment surgeries, forces schools, hospitals, and businesses to recognize a chosen gender,” he said.

The Texas lawmaker added, “I can go down the list, but this is about power and control.”

Listen to some of his remarks below:

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Vivek Saxena
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