Bryan Fischer
It's not the Equality Act, it's the Homosexual Supremacy Act
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1:05 pm CT, M-F www.afr.net
Don't let the left and the Talking Snake Media lie to you. They lie to us all by the words they hope will drive and dominate the narrative.
One of those words is "equality." They have deceived more people by this one word than perhaps by any other. After all, who could be against equality? If they can create a linguistic narrative driven by the notion of "equality," then if we oppose it they tag us as people who are against fairness and equal rights for all and as people who are nothing more than blackguards and bigots.
But the reality is that not all behaviors are equal in moral value and should not be treated the same. The behavior of a man who robs a bank is not morally equivalent to the behavior of a man who withdraws money from his own account at the same bank. Even though the behaviors have a superficial similarity – they both involve a man walking out of a bank with money in his pocket – we leave the one alone and throw the other one in prison.
The behavior of a man engaged in the act of sodomy with a homosexual partner is not morally equivalent to the behavior of a man who is engaged in loving and conjugal union with the wife of his youth. It is moral blindness and even stupidity to pretend otherwise.
We discriminate all the time against behaviors that are contrary to public policy and the social good. That's what public policy is all about, identifying behaviors, such as violence and theft, that are harmful to society and social tranquility, and deciding what sanctions are appropriate for socially destructive conduct. The law is, should be, and should only be, about behavior, not ideas or thoughts.
As Thomas Jefferson said (emphasis mine), "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." So we do not punish citizens for their thoughts, but for their actions only, actions that hurt others. We punish them for what they do, but not for what they want to do. They may want to do some pretty terrible things, but as long as they never take action on those impulses, the law and public policy are not concerned.
That's what is slippery and dangerous about the left's concentrated effort in the last couple of decades to switch the conversation from "sex" to "gender." "Sex" is a biological and genetic term. It's objective, determined by an individual's DNA. "Gender," however, is entirely subjective and non-quantifiable. Gender is a matter of something that is entirely in someone's mind and the way in which he views himself.
That's why "gender identity" is a term that is particularly dangerous for legal purposes, since someone's gender identity can change from day to day and even from hour to hour, without anyone being the wiser. We are all compelled to accept their entirely subjective view of their sexual identity and accept their inner sense of themselves as objectively binding on us. This is obviously irrational and cannot possibly provide a stable basis for public policy.
The first line of the bill ("The "Equality Act") sounds innocent enough: "To prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes."
Leftists in Congress are attempting right now to sell a lethal piece of legislation under this term in the so-called "Equality Act," which is proposed as a revision and an improvement over Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
But there is no equality in this bill for anyone who believes that homosexuality is non-normative sexual behavior and something that should not be promoted, subsidized, and celebrated, especially in our schools.
That's why I call this bill "The Homosexual Supremacy Act," since it elevates homosexuality and gender confusion above anything and everything else in the moral universe. Everyone will be required to bow the knee before the Baal of Sodom or face punishment.
If religious liberty and heterosexual normativity come in conflict with the LGBT agenda, liberty and normalcy is guaranteed to lose every time. It's worth the reminder that every advance of the LGBT agenda comes at the expense of religious liberty. This bill is no exception.
In fact, this law would specifically prohibit even a challenge to any of its provisions. The Religious Liberty Restoration Act of 1993 (signed into law by a Democrat president, Bill Clinton) is specifically overwritten in this bill. "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993...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." Read at face value, no one would even be allowed to go to court to challenge any part of this tyrannical bill.
There is no religious exemption in this bill. None. You might as well take the First Amendment and its guarantee of the free exercise of religion and tear it right out of your copy of the Constitution.
The reality is that in any circumstance covered by this bill, somebody is going to be discriminated against, either a Christian vendor or a member of the LGBT community. Either the Christian baker will be discriminated against by being forced to bake the cake, or the lesbian couple will be discriminated against by not getting their cake from their vendor of choice.
There is no middle ground. It's not possible for there to be no discrimination.
Discrimination will occur. The only choice is who will be discriminated against. In this bill, the only ones who could even possibly be discriminated against are people of Christian faith.
Either sexually confused teens will be discriminated against by being required to use the shower that corresponds to their biological sex, or sexually normal teens will be discriminated against by being forced to put up with that nonsense or get punished.
"Shelters" are included. Christian-run shelters (like the Salvation Army) will be forced to allow males who think they are females to bunk down with female residents. Adoption agencies are in there as well. Christian adoption agencies will be compelled to place vulnerable young children into same-sex households, despite the known harms associated with same-sex parenting.
"Conversion therapy" will be outlawed. No parent will be allowed to seek professional help for a sexually confused son or daughter to reconcile their mental identity with their biological identity. Their child will be condemned to the psychological torment of this dissonance until the day they commit suicide, which 41% of transgenders do.
Employment is covered. Christian bookstore owners will be required to hire tattooed transgenders or face the wrath of the United States government. Housing is included. Christian landlords will be required to rent to flamboyant same-sex couples or face punishment.
We have often predicted that the left will not be content until they have confined the church to the space inside the four walls of their buildings. Well, this law will do it. But it's even worse than that. Since there are no religious exemptions in this bill, churches will be ordered to allow transvestites and transgenders to use whatever bathroom and shower facilities they want regardless of the age or sex of who else might be in there.
If this bill is passed into law, overnight we will become more like China than the land of the free and the home of the brave. It would be impossible to find a law that represents a greater threat to religious liberty than this one.
If we value the Constitution crafted by the Founders, and the religious liberty which is an inalienable right from our Creator, we'd better get busy stopping this bill as soon as humanly possible.
As Ronald Reagan famously said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
It's freedom or slavery. And it's time to choose between them.
© Bryan Fischer
April 4, 2019
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1:05 pm CT, M-F www.afr.net
Don't let the left and the Talking Snake Media lie to you. They lie to us all by the words they hope will drive and dominate the narrative.
One of those words is "equality." They have deceived more people by this one word than perhaps by any other. After all, who could be against equality? If they can create a linguistic narrative driven by the notion of "equality," then if we oppose it they tag us as people who are against fairness and equal rights for all and as people who are nothing more than blackguards and bigots.
But the reality is that not all behaviors are equal in moral value and should not be treated the same. The behavior of a man who robs a bank is not morally equivalent to the behavior of a man who withdraws money from his own account at the same bank. Even though the behaviors have a superficial similarity – they both involve a man walking out of a bank with money in his pocket – we leave the one alone and throw the other one in prison.
The behavior of a man engaged in the act of sodomy with a homosexual partner is not morally equivalent to the behavior of a man who is engaged in loving and conjugal union with the wife of his youth. It is moral blindness and even stupidity to pretend otherwise.
We discriminate all the time against behaviors that are contrary to public policy and the social good. That's what public policy is all about, identifying behaviors, such as violence and theft, that are harmful to society and social tranquility, and deciding what sanctions are appropriate for socially destructive conduct. The law is, should be, and should only be, about behavior, not ideas or thoughts.
As Thomas Jefferson said (emphasis mine), "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." So we do not punish citizens for their thoughts, but for their actions only, actions that hurt others. We punish them for what they do, but not for what they want to do. They may want to do some pretty terrible things, but as long as they never take action on those impulses, the law and public policy are not concerned.
That's what is slippery and dangerous about the left's concentrated effort in the last couple of decades to switch the conversation from "sex" to "gender." "Sex" is a biological and genetic term. It's objective, determined by an individual's DNA. "Gender," however, is entirely subjective and non-quantifiable. Gender is a matter of something that is entirely in someone's mind and the way in which he views himself.
That's why "gender identity" is a term that is particularly dangerous for legal purposes, since someone's gender identity can change from day to day and even from hour to hour, without anyone being the wiser. We are all compelled to accept their entirely subjective view of their sexual identity and accept their inner sense of themselves as objectively binding on us. This is obviously irrational and cannot possibly provide a stable basis for public policy.
The first line of the bill ("The "Equality Act") sounds innocent enough: "To prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes."
Leftists in Congress are attempting right now to sell a lethal piece of legislation under this term in the so-called "Equality Act," which is proposed as a revision and an improvement over Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
But there is no equality in this bill for anyone who believes that homosexuality is non-normative sexual behavior and something that should not be promoted, subsidized, and celebrated, especially in our schools.
That's why I call this bill "The Homosexual Supremacy Act," since it elevates homosexuality and gender confusion above anything and everything else in the moral universe. Everyone will be required to bow the knee before the Baal of Sodom or face punishment.
If religious liberty and heterosexual normativity come in conflict with the LGBT agenda, liberty and normalcy is guaranteed to lose every time. It's worth the reminder that every advance of the LGBT agenda comes at the expense of religious liberty. This bill is no exception.
In fact, this law would specifically prohibit even a challenge to any of its provisions. The Religious Liberty Restoration Act of 1993 (signed into law by a Democrat president, Bill Clinton) is specifically overwritten in this bill. "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993...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." Read at face value, no one would even be allowed to go to court to challenge any part of this tyrannical bill.
There is no religious exemption in this bill. None. You might as well take the First Amendment and its guarantee of the free exercise of religion and tear it right out of your copy of the Constitution.
The reality is that in any circumstance covered by this bill, somebody is going to be discriminated against, either a Christian vendor or a member of the LGBT community. Either the Christian baker will be discriminated against by being forced to bake the cake, or the lesbian couple will be discriminated against by not getting their cake from their vendor of choice.
There is no middle ground. It's not possible for there to be no discrimination.
Discrimination will occur. The only choice is who will be discriminated against. In this bill, the only ones who could even possibly be discriminated against are people of Christian faith.
Either sexually confused teens will be discriminated against by being required to use the shower that corresponds to their biological sex, or sexually normal teens will be discriminated against by being forced to put up with that nonsense or get punished.
"Shelters" are included. Christian-run shelters (like the Salvation Army) will be forced to allow males who think they are females to bunk down with female residents. Adoption agencies are in there as well. Christian adoption agencies will be compelled to place vulnerable young children into same-sex households, despite the known harms associated with same-sex parenting.
"Conversion therapy" will be outlawed. No parent will be allowed to seek professional help for a sexually confused son or daughter to reconcile their mental identity with their biological identity. Their child will be condemned to the psychological torment of this dissonance until the day they commit suicide, which 41% of transgenders do.
Employment is covered. Christian bookstore owners will be required to hire tattooed transgenders or face the wrath of the United States government. Housing is included. Christian landlords will be required to rent to flamboyant same-sex couples or face punishment.
We have often predicted that the left will not be content until they have confined the church to the space inside the four walls of their buildings. Well, this law will do it. But it's even worse than that. Since there are no religious exemptions in this bill, churches will be ordered to allow transvestites and transgenders to use whatever bathroom and shower facilities they want regardless of the age or sex of who else might be in there.
If this bill is passed into law, overnight we will become more like China than the land of the free and the home of the brave. It would be impossible to find a law that represents a greater threat to religious liberty than this one.
If we value the Constitution crafted by the Founders, and the religious liberty which is an inalienable right from our Creator, we'd better get busy stopping this bill as soon as humanly possible.
As Ronald Reagan famously said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
It's freedom or slavery. And it's time to choose between them.
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
