Last Sunday, CBS News featured a segment on its 60 Minutes program which highlighted the dangerous trend of quickly affirming gender dysphoria and rushing individuals through the process of sexual “transitioning.” Radical, surgical changes (including breast and testicle removal) can never be reversed, though the individuals may regret their decisions later.
Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal and the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, reported on Twitter that the 60 Minutes investigative segment acknowledged “the role of peer influence & social media in encouraging trans identification in teens, the rising population of de-transitioners, & a medical system that ‘affirms’ self-diagnoses of gender dysphoria in place of adequate oversight.”
Transgenderism is a dangerous and destructive ideology. And, it is about to be used to transform civil rights legislation and affect us all. Earlier this year, the so-called Equality Act was reintroduced into the U.S. House of Representatives as H.R. 5, after failing to receive Senate approval in 2019. This time, it passed the Democrat-dominated House and now waits to be considered in the Senate.
The new H.R. 5 amends Title VII of our civil rights law, among other laws, to explicitly redefine the bigender meaning of sex and add sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) as outlawed forms of discrimination.
That may sound like a good idea to many. Who would want to make discrimination legal? But H.R. 5 actually proposes profound and far-reaching changes to the 1960’s Civil Rights Act that would directly threaten religious liberty, free speech and freedom of conscience for all Americans.
How do we know? Because H.R. 5 goes out of its way to expressly exempt itself from the protections of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was—ironically—introduced by Congressman Chuck Schumer (D-NY). It was meant to ensure protection for religious individuals and organizations against government interference with the practice of their faith and conscience.
The Equality Act is demonstrably hostile to religion. It will force faith-based organizations to adjust their programs, open up their privacy facilities to transgender (opposite-sex) persons and revise employment policies, or be subject to punitive liability.
H.R. 5 would erase biological reality (male and female) and actually reduce, not expand, protections against discrimination, contrary to the original intent of Congress. Sanctity of life laws, parental rights and the privacy and safety of women and girls may all be in jeopardy, if “gender identity” (read ideology) is enshrined into U.S. Civil Rights law.
Contact your Senators today at senate.gov! {eoa}
Gary Curtis served in full-time ministry for 50 years, the last 27 years of which he was part of the pastoral staff of The Church on The Way, the Van Nuys’ California Foursquare church. Now retired, Gary continues to write a weekly blog at worshipontheway.wordpress.com and frequent articles for digital and print platforms.
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