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U.S. House Passes “In-Equality” Act

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)


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Banning Christianity: U.S. House Passes Faux-Equality Act

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


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U.S. House Votes to Repeal ObamaCare Again

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 239-186 to repeal Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act with no Democrat votes in support. Three Illinois Republicans sent out explanations for their votes immediately after casting them.

Illinois U.S. Representative Bob Dold (IL-10) was one of three Republicans to oppose it, along with freshmen U.S. Representatives John Katko of New York and Bruce Poliquin of Maine.

“The people of the 10th District sent me to Congress to advance solutions, not sound bites, to the problems we face. Among the issues that I believe congress must urgently address are the rising premiums and deductibles under the Affordable Care Act, along with the law’s massive cuts to Medicare programs and plan cancellations that have limited choices in healthcare.  I have always maintained that the Affordable Care Act was the wrong approach for America’s healthcare system and opposed its passage from the start.  However, the only way we are ever going to move beyond simply talking about the law’s many flaws and finally deliver solutions to the American people is through bipartisan reforms that can pass both chambers of congress and receive the President’s signature.

“Casting yet another symbolic vote for full repeal of the law, without any replacement legislation, simply distracts us from the work that must be done to drive costs down, restore access to care and make healthcare work for everyone.”

Republican Illinois U.S. Representatives John Shimkus (IL-15) and Aaron Schock (IL-18) supported the measure.

“The reality is that the President’s upending of our health insurance system has hurt more Americans than it has helped,” said Shimkus.

“On a family level, millions of Americans have lost plans they liked and were promised they could keep while others have been forced to pay hundreds of dollars more just to keep seeing their doctor,” Shimkus continued. “For employees and their employers, Obamacare’s costly mandates have led to cutbacks in hours, wages and hiring.”

Schock said:

“Obamacare continues to be a flawed program that created more than $1.8 trillion in new spending, imposed more than $1 trillion in new taxes on American working families, and caused millions of people to lose their coverage,” Schock said of his vote. “I believe a far simpler, more cost-efficient way to fix our broken healthcare system is to give individuals and families more control over their own healthcare choices, to foster the use of health savings accounts, and to promote more healthy lifestyles.”

Schock continued,

“Prevention and wellness will not only lead to longer, healthier lives for all Americans, but it will reduce the overall cost of healthcare across the country. I will continue to work with my colleagues on the House Committee on Ways and Means to reform our healthcare system and protect the doctor-patient relationship. At the same time, I will work across the aisle to incentivize healthy lifestyles and personal wellness.”

The Illinois Congressional delegation roll call on H.R. 596 is below. The bill now proceeds to the U.S. Senate. It is unknown how Illinois’ U.S. Senator Mark Kirk will vote on the measure.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin has promised to oppose it. President Obama promises to veto it.

Voting Yes — U.S. Representatives Mike Bost, Rodney Davis, Randy Hultgren, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Roskam, Aaron Schock, John Shimkus

Voting No – U.S. Representatives – Bob Dold, Cheri Bustos, Bobby Rush, Robin Kelly, Dan Lipinski, Danny Davis, Bill Foster, Mike Quigley, Jan Schakowsky

Not voting – Tammy Duckworth, Luis Gutierrez


This article was originally posted at the IllinoisReview.com website.