What Problems Would Be Caused by Passage of the Equality Act?

             The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives created H.R.5, generally known as the Equality Act. This bill has the potential to damage various areas of life in America. According to Jarrett Stepman, this bill, if it became law, would “add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes into the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” If passed, this bill would mandate the radical gender ideology through federal law. 

“[The Equality Act] would create a destructive gender ideology in education, and it would establish a government-favored viewpoint on marriage that would stigmatize children and their parents,” said Emilie Kao, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.

            At the webinar held yesterday, participants spoke of numerous ways that the Equality Act would hurt girls, women, and families. This potential law would put children on an uneven playing field, and it would move the rights of women and girls backwards. It “would adversely affect parents, adoption agencies, religious organizations, and many other Americans” according to Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.).

            The potential law would destroy the success for women and girls made possible by Title IX because it would cause school and sports programs to allow biological males to compete against girls and women if they “identify” as female.

“What is very concerning to me is the impact of the Equality Act on women’s sports,” [Hartzler] said. “And it will set back women, and ruin all the gains they have made to get a level playing field in sports, by allowing those who have different gender identities – that is, biological males who identify as females – to participate in female sports.”

            Hartzler recognized what many people apparently do not: there are differences between men and women. These differences create unfairness when biological men who identify as women are allowed to play female sports. In most situations where a man competes against a woman, the male wins. If biological men are allowed to compete in women’s sports, it becomes almost impossible for females to get collegiate athletic scholarships.

            Connecticut is one state that allows transgender women – biological males – to compete in female sports and have done so for seven years. “Biological males participating in female sports ‘have won over 15 different championships’ that would have gone to girls,” according to Hartzler. If the Equality Act becomes law, it will create the same situation nationwide and destroy women’s sports programs.

            As bad as it would treat women’s sports, this is unimportant to what it does to children and teenagers who are confused about the biological sex. Dr. Michelle Cretella is the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians. According to Stepman, she explained that “gender dysphoria in minors should be treated carefully and with a ‘thorough psychological assessment’ of the child. “As long as the children do not have this confusion reinforced, the majority of children who are confused about their biological sex will outgrow it by the time they are young adults,” Cretella said.

            Cretella said that the number of children with the gender-identity confusion is increasing. “We are essentially gaslighting children into the lie that they could be born in the wrong body,” Cretella said. “This then will put them on a medical pathway … in which we stop their normal puberty, we arrest it, we give them a disease, the absence of normal puberty.” She called the situation “institutionalized child abuse.”

            The “most troubling part of the new gender-identity agenda” for Maria Keffler, a co-founder of Partners for Ethical Care, is that children are being told things that are not true. The agenda introduces things that are “not factual, that are not scientifically underpinned, that have no basis in reality,” and that “we are teaching this to our kids en masse.”

            Another part of the problem is that professional therapists “will not address other underlying problems in children with gender dysphoria. Teachers, administrators, and counselors are compelled to affirm gender confusion and medicalize it.” All of these problems would be reinforced by the Equality Act and reach into many areas of American life. The passage of this bill would open a Pandora’s Box of many problems.