This Public Discourse article talks about the new “Equality Act” proposed by Democrats who are anxious to destroy Judeo-Christian values by using the government as a weapon against faith-based organizations, and individuals.
Excerpt:
So, in concrete terms, what would the proposed law do? Here are just a few of the potential areas of impact, given how the Equality Act would amend various provisions of the Civil Rights Act:
– Employment: would amend Title VII to create new protected classes for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” with no countervailing exemptions for faith-based organizations that maintain internal standards of sexual conduct rooted in longstanding religious tenets.
– Federal Programs: would amend Title VI, historically limited to race, color, and national origin, to create new protected classes for “sex, sexual orientation, gender identity,” with no countervailing protections for faith-based providers who willingly serve every program-eligible person but maintain internal standards of sexual conduct rooted in longstanding religious tenets.
– Public Accommodation: would drastically expand the Title II definition of “public accommodation” to cover “gatherings” and facilities historically owned and operated by churches or religious organizations—“shelters,” “food banks,” and “care centers”—extending far beyond the categories at issue during the Civil Rights Movement: common carriers (bus, taxi, train, and air lines), public utilities, hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues.
– Public Education: would amend Title IV definitions of “desegregation” to include new protected classes for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” placing in the litigation crosshairs all sex-restricted facilities like dormitories, restrooms, or locker rooms.
– Religious Freedom Restoration Act: would omit exemptions for religious organizations contained in prior drafts of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and expressly state that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) may not be used as a defense or a basis for challenging the Equality Act.
– Sex: would enter a congressional finding that “federal agencies and courts have correctly interpreted [] prohibitions on sex discrimination to include discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex stereotypes,” thereby adopting the EEOC’s most aggressively extra-textual recent rulings.
– Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications: would amend Title VII exemptions for employers who have sex-based “bona fide occupational qualifications” (BFOQ) for specialized jobs—for example, male security guards in a maximum security prison or female undercover officers in a sex-trafficking sting operation—to require recognition of persons “in accordance with their gender identity.”
Unlike ENDA, the Equality Act does not even feign an equal balancing of sexual liberty and religious liberty. Like some voracious legal Pac-Man, the Obergefell-fueled Equality Act devours any preexisting constitutional rights that might impede absolute victory in the march for “marriage equality”: speech, association, assembly, and the free exercise of religion. The Equality Act boldly declares that some constitutional rights are “more equal than others.”
It seems like every day I am getting a messages from some Christian friend about how his or her co-workers, family or friends are attacking the traditional definition of marriage. And I tell them not to respond directly, but to instead write about it under an alias. It seems like we can no longer even speak in defense of traditional marriage without running into all kinds of legal problems from people who are “offended”. Somehow, their offending us with their view doesn’t draw any ire from the law. But the reverse is not true – it’s open season on pre-sexual-revolution views of dating, sex and marriage.
Marriage is something I really believe in, and have always believed in. And I don’t mean the new post-sexual-revolution definition of marriage. I mean the traditional view of marriage: chastity, courting, commitment, fidelity, parenting. It seems really obvious to me that marriage is something beautiful, something that is above our selfish desires, something that helps us to grow and love someone of a complementary nature self-sacrificially. There is a mystery in the way that a man and woman come together to make children and then raise them, balancing out their different male and female natures for a common purpose. But if I say anything like that in public under my real name in so many places where the topic comes up, then suddenly I would get into so much trouble.
We really need to be focused about restoring our freedom to express our support for traditional marriage, and the natural family in public.
WINTERY KNIGHT 