Recently, America’s foolish president issued a foolish Transgender Day of Visibility Proclamation in which he pledged support for a bill that will jeopardize First Amendment religious free exercise and speech protections for conservative Americans. In his Proclamation, Biden also called for all Americans to adopt his controversial beliefs on cross-sex impersonation. Once again Biden—the self-identifying unity president—has intensified division.

Ordinary Americans—as opposed to those who make millions by selling political influence—fret about how they will pay for groceries and gas. They worry about fentanyl and criminals pouring over the southern border and about illegal immigrants being dumped by the government in their cities in the dark of night.

What keeps Joe Biden awake in the afternoon? Does he worry about the 56,000 synthetic opioid—mostly fentanyl—deaths in 2020? Or about the 900,000 humans killed in the womb annually? Do the 21,000 murders in 2020 cause him sleepless afternoons? Not so much. It appears from his Proclamation that what troubles Biden is what he calls “the epidemic of violence” against cross-dressers. That would be about 50 people killed in 2021, many of whom were victims of domestic violence—not anti-“trans” hate crimes. While every murder is a tragedy, 50 deaths does not an epidemic of violence make.

The name “Transgender Day of Visibility,” is intended to convey the fiction that on all other days, cross-sex impersonators are invisible. This, my friends, is what is called “gaslighting.” As Chastity “Chaz” Bono, Jaron Bloshinksy (“Jazz Jennings”), Roderick “LaVerne” Cox, Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner, Richard “Rachel” Levine, Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, Ellen “Elliot” Page, Gavin “Laurel” Hubbard, William “Lia” Thomas, Larry “Lana” Wachowski, Andy “Lilly” Wachowski, and scores of drag queens and teens masquerade as the sex they aren’t, invading bathrooms where they don’t belong, leftists claim “transgender” persons are invisible.

In his Royal Proclamation last week, Biden declared his enthusiastic support for the ruinous anti-constitutional Equality Act. The Equality Act has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with advancing the alchemical superstition about the alleged ability of humans to become the opposite sex through desire, cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and mutilating cosmetic surgery.

In order to accomplish the end goal of eradicating all public recognition of sex differences, “trans”-cultists must eradicate the ability of free people to speak freely their beliefs about “gender” and sex.

Lawmakers in thrall to or terrified by the “trans”-cult stripped the Equality Act of religious protections. Numerous legal scholars have warned that the passage of the Equality Act poses the most significant threat to constitutional protections of the free exercise of religion ever in America’s history.

Mary Hasson, graduate of Notre Dame Law School and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., testified about this threat at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:

The Equality Act threatens serious harm to religious believers and religious organizations. … The Equality Act attacks First Amendment rights as well, inserting language that attempts to tip the scales against believers if they assert claims under the First Amendment or Equal Protection.

The Equality Act … expand[s] “public accommodations” to permit discrimination claims wherever Americans “gather,” even virtually. The result? Churches, synagogues, temples, faith-based schools, soup kitchens, and shelters for battered women will be subject to government coercion pressuring them to compromise their religious beliefs or risk endless litigation.

Recipients of federal funds, including houses of worship, religious schools and other faith-based organizations are litigation targets under the Equality Act as well—even for something as simple as maintaining sex-segregated bathrooms. This means a Muslim food bank, Catholic homeless shelter, or Christian center for female survivors of domestic violence will be punished for doing good while following their religious teachings.

Similarly, any private school that enrolls students who receive Pell grants or who participate in school lunch programs are subject to the Equality Act’s sex discrimination provisions. Urban Catholic schools, for example, which provide life-changing education to low-income children would face an untenable choice: violate their deeply held religious beliefs about human nature, sexual difference, and marriage or close their doors to students who rely on federal help. Adoption and foster care programs run by religious believers who desire to serve the most vulnerable are also at risk.

Biden said one true thing in his Royal Proclamation. He said that those who identify as “transgender” are “made in the image of God and deserving of dignity, respect, and support.” Every human is created in the image of God, but that image is marred by our sinful desires and acts. Humans deserve respect by virtue of being humans—despite the sinful things we desire and do.

One’s dignity—the state or quality of being worthy of honor—is undermined by sinful acts like cross-dressing and mutilating one’s God-created, healthy body.

“Trans”-identifying persons do deserve support, but life and truth-affirming support should never include participating in a delusion or facilitating artificially induced cessation of natural biological processes and surgical mutilation of healthy, properly functioning parts of sexual anatomy.

When promoting false beliefs about “gender identity,” the left talks a lot about “authenticity” without providing their definition—or redefinition—of the term. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “authentic” as “conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, and belief.” As such, a man seeking to pass as a woman is the antithesis of authenticity, and celebrating cross-sex-passing robs men and women of dignity.

Leftists have also redefined “identity.” Homosexual activists first transformed the concept of “identity,” and then seeing how effective a propaganda tool the revised concept of identity was, cross-sex impersonators culturally appropriated it.

Homo-activists sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

Identity in its former incarnation was merely a way of describing someone. Identity when applied to individual persons denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, experienced and affirmed by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

Identity was not conceived as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., height or skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the diverse elements that constitute identity.

By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.

In short, this is what “progressives” think about identity (except when it comes to those whose identity is found in Christ):

• All phenomena that make up identity are off-limits to moral judgment.
• Cross-sex impersonation is part of identity.
• Therefore, cross-sex impersonation is immune from moral judgment.

But if all conditions constituted by powerful, persistent, unchosen desires and the behaviors impelled by such feelings are part of this new and culturally destructive understanding of identity and, therefore, immune from moral judgment, then zoophilila/bestiality, “minor-attraction,” “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” and polyamory/promiscuity are immune from moral judgment.

Biden announced that “We celebrate the activism and determination that have fueled the fight for transgender equality.” Presumably, he is using the royal “we” since not all Americans celebrate “trans” activism, which is destroying all respect for and public recognition of sex differences. No more biologically based clubs for boys and girls, no more single sex bathrooms, no more girls’ sports.

Equality means to treat like things alike. As such, “trans”-cultists and their collaborators like Biden are promoting anti-equality. They are demanding that unlike things—that is men and women—be treated as if they’re alike in every context, including contexts in which sex differences matter.

When Biden refers to the “discrimination that the transgender community continues to face across our Nation and around the world,” he is using the word “discrimination” to describe moral beliefs about cross-dressing and mutilating cosmetic procedures with which he disagrees. If moral disapproval of ideas or volitional acts constitutes discrimination, then Biden’s disapproval of the beliefs of Christians on “gender” and sex as well as the acts impelled by those beliefs constitutes discrimination.

Applying consistently leftist redefinitions of authenticity, identity, and discrimination would mean that no one could express disapproval of any beliefs, desires, or volitional acts. These redefinitions pave the broad way to moral anarchy.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Biden-the-Unity-President-Divides-Again.mp3

The Newsweek article by Natasha Chart and Rabbi Yaakov Menken begins with these words: “It would be hard to accuse an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and an agnostic feminist leader of walking in lockstep.” All the more would this be true if you added Catholics to the mix, then threw in some evangelicals. What cause could bring such disparate people together, all united as one?

Religious Rights and Women’s Rights at Stake

As Chart and Menken wrote, “We agree entirely that the Equality Act is a fatally flawed, and even hateful, piece of legislation.” Or, as expressed by the chairmen of five U.S. bishops’ committees, the Equality Act will “discriminate against people of faith” — meaning, of Christian faith or other faiths.

As summed up by evangelical leader Mat Staver, “HR 5 is a bill that pushes the LGBT agenda on all people and targets Christianity in every area of life — including the church. There will be an increase of instances where Christians and others are being punished unless they violate their beliefs in order to comply with such a law. And that is just the beginning of unconstitutional chaos in America.”

In short, not only would religious beliefs be trampled in the name of “equality,” but simple human rights — most specifically, women’s rights — would be trampled as well. (As Chart and Menken wrote, “Women, check your ‘privilege.’”)

That’s why many people of faith and non-faith are uniting together against the so-called Equality Act.

Just consider what it would mandate across the nation, with no possibility of religious exemptions.

Here are some potential scenarios.

What Might Soon be Illegal “Discrimination”? Plenty.

An out and proud gay schoolteacher wants to teach at an Orthodox Jewish day school. Under the Equality Act, the school could not refuse him a job because his out and proud lifestyle violated Jewish law. That would be discrimination. As for Orthodox Jewish synagogues, if challenged, they would not be allowed to have separate seating for men and women at public events. Discrimination again!

What if a biological male who identifies as a female, yet still likes to sport a 5-o’clock shadow, wants to work at a Christian preschool, reading stories to the children? The school could not say, “We’re sorry, but we’re not hiring you. That would be confusing to the children.” Under the Equality Act, that would now be discrimination.

Here are a few more scenarios to consider.

You are a professional counselor, and an 18-year-old girl struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions comes to you for help. She had been raped when she was 12 and since then, has found men repulsive. Yet she always wanted to be married and have children and she’s interested in getting to the root of her unwanted same-sex attractions. Under the Equality Act, counseling her would be illegal.

You run a women’s shelter for abused women and have always refused to house biological males who identify as transgender women. You have limited facilities, and there’s no way your clients, already traumatized, should be forced to share showers and bathrooms and bedrooms with biological males. Under the Equality Act, you would be forced to accept transgender “women.”

You are the principal of a public school with an excellent girls’ track team, and your top female athletes win college scholarships on a regular basis. Under the Equality Act, you would be forced to allow boys who identify as girls to compete with the girls, thereby robbing them of both victories and scholarships, not to mention personal dignity. (One website pointed out that, “In 2018, 275 high school boys ran the 400 meter faster than the lifetime best of Olympic Team USA member and world-record-holding sprinter Allyson Felix, while in 2017 thousands of men ran the 400 meter faster than any of the world’s three fastest women.”)

Your church building is used to host weddings on a regular basis. Under the Equality Act, you will not be allowed to say no to same-sex couples, even though this violates historic tenets of your faith.

Traditional Religious Practices: “As Unacceptable as was Jim Crow”

That’s why Mat Staver is almost shouting out this warning about the bill (emphasis his):

It even criminalizes those who share their own story of finding freedom in Christ from homosexuality in a book or speaking engagement. This bill literally sets the stage for banning the Bible, which offers the power to free those wanting to turn away from homosexual conduct.

And there is NO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION to this bill!

Similarly, Chart and Menken warn, “Incredibly, the Equality Act specifically strips away protection of religious practice guaranteed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.” (Their emphasis.)

In short, “The Equality Act thus deems a religiously motivated refusal to participate in a same-sex marriage to be no different than a KKK member’s refusal to cater a multiethnic couple’s nuptials. Traditional religious practices, according to the Equality Act, are as unacceptable as was Jim Crow.”

And that is why people from a wide range of backgrounds are standing together against this ill-conceived bill. (I haven’t even mentioned the abortion-related aspects of the bill, among other important issues. See this relevant article from 2019.)

We Can All Stand Together on This. Here’s How

The U.S. House has passed the bill and it is now pending over at the U.S. Senate. Contact your senators at once, urging them to vote no. It’s one thing to stand against the mistreatment of those who identify as LGBTQ (or anything else). It’s another thing to turn the world upside down, throw out common sense and logic, and trash the religious liberties of the majority of the nation in the name of equality.

As expressed by the Catholic bishops, “Human dignity is central to what Catholics believe because every person is made in the image of God and should be treated accordingly, with respect and compassion. This commitment is reflected in the church’s charitable service to all people, without regard to race, religion or any other characteristic.”

Consequently, “It means we need to honor every person’s right to gainful employment free of unjust discrimination or harassment, and to the basic goods that they need to live and thrive. It also means that people of differing beliefs should be respected. In this, we wholeheartedly support nondiscrimination principles to ensure that everyone’s rights are protected.”

And that is precisely why we need our elected officials to vote against the Equality Act as it is currently written. We can all stand together on this.

Take ACTION:  The measure is pending a vote in the U.S. Senate where the outcome remains uncertain. Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Read more:

U.S. House Passes “In-Equality” Act

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

On Thursday afternoon (2/25/2021), the U.S. House of Representatives voted 224 to 206 to pass the so-called “Equality Act” (H.R. 5), which would enshrine “sexual orientation” (i.e., homosexuality) and “gender identity” (i.e., cross-sex identification) as legally protected classes in a myriad of federal laws. The vote fell along party lines, with only three Republicans (U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, John Katko of New York, and Tom Reed of New York) voting with the Democratic majority, and two Republicans not voting.

Illinois’ congressional delegation voted as expected. Republicans Mike Bost, Rodney Davis, Adam Kinzinger, Daren LaHood, and Mary Miller voted against H.R. 5.

Democrats Cheri Bustos, Sean Casten, Danny Davis, Bill Foster, Chuy Garcia, Robin Kelly, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Marie Newman, Mike Quigley, Bobby Rush, Jan Schakowsky, Brad Schneider, and Lauren Underwood voted in favor of H.R. 5.

Take ACTION:  The measure now proceeds to the U.S. Senate where the potential outcome remains uncertain. Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

To be clear, H.R. 5 would remove significant rights and opportunities from many in our communities:

• People of faith who live and work consistently with their religious beliefs on marriage and human sexuality would be harmed. This includes medical professionals forced to participate in “gender transition” efforts, counselors banned from helping their clients, and religious employers (like Christian schools) forced to hire those who do not share their mission. The bill specifically takes away the religious protections we currently have under federal law.

• Women and girls would be forced to compete in athletics on an unfair playing field with biological males.

• School children and adults would have their privacy rights infringed upon by allowing sex-specific facilities (locker rooms, showers, bathrooms) to be used by the opposite biological sex.

• Women’s shelters would be forced to admit biological men.

• Adoption agencies and other non-profit charities would be subjected to government shutdown and discrimination lawsuits for continuing to follow their mission.

• Free speech would be censored by compelling policies for preferred pronoun use.

We believe every human being is created in the image and likeness of Almighty God, and therefore deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Using the heavy hand of government, however, to force good people to deny biological realities and to compromise their religious convictions is not the answer.

Speak up now before it is too late.

To understand more about the widespread harms the passage of H.R. 5 would have on our nation, see IFI recent Action Alert and the host of helpful resources from our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom.

Read more:

U.S. House passes pro-abortion ‘Equality Act’ to write transgenderism into civil rights law (LifeSiteNews.com)

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts! Stay in the loop by texting “IFI” to 555888 or click here to enroll right away.

Click HERE to donate to IFI

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed the disastrous and dishonestly titled Equality Act that if passed into law will not merely gut First Amendment protections but effectively ban Christianity and any other religions that teach that homoerotic acts and cross-sex impersonation are immoral.

This proposal (H.R. 5) passed Friday afternoon by a vote of 236 to 173 (with 23 not voting). The Illinois Congressional delegation voted along party lines. Congressman Darrin LaHood (R-Peoria) was absent but has told us that he was a “no” vote.

Here are the 8 traitorous U.S. House Republicans who voted with the Democrats in favor of the faux-equality act: Reps. Susan Brooks (Ind.), Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) Will Hurd (Texas), John Katko (N.Y.), Tom Reed (N.Y.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Greg Walden (Ore.).

They sold their souls and our religious liberty, assembly rights, and speech rights for a mess of pottage in the form of their re-election bids. Either self-serving desire to preserve their position was their motivation, or they have no understanding of either equality or the differences between conditions like race and sex and conditions like homoeroticism and opposite-sex impersonation.

The National Review exposes how radical and dangerous the Equality Act is:

Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has been a longtime supporter of same-sex marriage…. Laycock has also been a longtime supporter of enacting a federal gay-rights non-discrimination law, but he doesn’t support the Equality Act, a bill just approved by the House of Representatives that would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, because it would “crush” conscientious objectors.

“It goes very far to stamp out religious exemptions,” Laycock tells National Review in an email. “It regulates religious non-profits. And then it says that [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] does not apply to any claim under the Equality Act. This would be the first time Congress has limited the reach of RFRA. This is not a good-faith attempt to reconcile competing interests. It is an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side….” Laycock says that religious schools would probably be viewed as “public accommodations” under the Equality Act even if they refuse all federal funding.”

If passed and signed into law, the Equality Act would require that federal law recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like race and biological sex, which are objective, 100 percent heritable conditions that are in all cases immutable, and carry no behavioral implications.

Once the law is enjoined to protect two groups based on their subjective, internal sexual feelings and volitional sexual behaviors, we open a Pandora’s Box of evils that will inevitably result in conflicts between the spanking new legal rights of those who embrace sexual deviance as “identity” and 1. the First Amendment rights of those who reject sexual deviance, 2. the moral right of businesses to require restrooms, locker rooms, and showers to correspond to biological sex, 3. the right of businesses to fire or refuse to hire a person who chooses to masquerade as the opposite sex, and 4. the right of public schools to fire or to refuse to hire a person who chooses to impersonate the opposite sex.

Thomas Donnelly–aka “Giselle”

There is nothing intrinsically unjust about treating people differently based on their volitional choices. There is nothing unjust about treating biological women as different from biological men who impersonate women. And it is manifestly just and proper for an organization or business to fire people like Thomas Donnelly (see photo), a defense and national security Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and BDSM aficionado who now masquerades as a woman named “Giselle.”

Just as the legal prohibition of discrimination based on homoerotic feelings and acts conflicts with the legal prohibition of religious discrimination, so will the legal prohibition of discrimination based on feelings about maleness and femaleness and acts related to those feelings set in motion conflicts with prohibitions of religious and sex discrimination. It is morally and intellectually untenable that subjective feelings and volitional acts supersede both biological sex and religion as a protected class.

Pastor and theologian Doug Wilson makes clear the totalizing and totalitarian impulses and goals of LGB and T activists (a schism among whom is growing):

[T]he sexual revolutionaries are not interested in anything shy of total and complete victory.

And that is what the faux-equality act is about: total and complete victory over theologically orthodox Christians, which necessarily means eradicating their freedom to speak freely, assemble/associate, and exercise their religion.

Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, provides a troubling list of effects that will ensue from the passage of the pernicious Equality Act—which speaking in the strident voice of cultural regressives, Dr. Gagnon facetiously calls the “Get the Homophobic and Transphobic Bigots Act.” According to Dr. Gagnon, the faux-equality act will mandate:

1.) Nationwide “LGBTQ” indoctrination in school curricula and in workplaces, where you and your children will regularly learn and relearn that anyone who is not a cheerleader for all things “gay” and “transgender” is a hateful, ignorant, and indecent bigot who has no place in society (note that Christian teachers in public schools will be forced not only to listen to such presentations but also to make them for students).

2.) State social services to take your children away from you if you oppose your child’s “right” to transition to a person of the other sex or enter homosexual sexual relationships.

3.) Affirmative-action hiring of people who identify as “transgender” and “gay” throughout industry and academia.

4.) Speech that embraces the faux gender identity of “transgenders” under penalty of fines and imprisonment.

5.) “Transgender female” (i.e., male) access to female restrooms, showers, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shelters, dormitories, and sports.

6.) Use of all commercial talents (photographers, artists, bakers, wedding planners, printers, etc.), including forced speech (lettering, messages) to promote transgenderism and homosexual intercourse, under pain of fines and imprisonment.

7.) The firing of white-collar employees who express any religious or secular views deemed “hateful” by “LGBTQ” radicals, even if that view is expressed outside the workplace, say (for example) in social media.

8.) Loss of federal financial aid, science grants, and ultimately accreditation for Christian colleges and universities that maintain “discriminatory” policies toward LGBTQ behavior and relationships, whatever short-term, bait-and-switch exemption is offered to get the bill passed.

9.) Doctors and Catholic hospitals to perform “sex-change” operations on children and to treat all “trans” patients not as their real biological sex but as the sex that they pretend to be.

10.) Law enforcement agencies, courts, and medical research studies to categorize “trans-persons” by their pretend sex.

11.) Censorship, with punitive penalties imposed if at all possible, on all speech and publications that make homosexual and transgender persons “feel unsafe” (essentially all speech critical of homosexual intercourse and transgenderism).

Just slapping the word “equality” onto legislation does not transform it magically into something good or make it about equality. The Equality Act—like the ERA—is not about equality. The Equality Act—like the ERA–serves the tyrannical interests of the “LGBTQQAP” community. And both will be used to deny the rights of women and Christians.

You have been amply warned. Now, do something.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators to urge him/her to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.” If you know the name of your local official, you can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you with his/her office to leave a message.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/HR5.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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