The "Suicidal" Equality Act Of 2019

[Webster]

OneNewsNow: The suicidal Equality Act of 2019

Thursday, May 9, 2019 | Star Parker - Guest Columnist
http://www.urbancure.org/
--Historian Arnold Toynbee once said: "An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide." Indeed, the deniers of reality on Capitol Hill are driving the so-called Equality Act – a perverse piece of legislation that will destroy us.

The House Judiciary Committee has voted out the Equality Act of 2019 (H.R.5). It now heads for a vote on the House floor with 240 co-sponsors, which means its passage is virtually certain.

The legislation amends all major civil rights law, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to include "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" along with race, sex and religion as classes that are protected from discrimination.

There is so much wrong here it is hard to know where to start.

My dictionary defines psychosis as "a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality."

We now have a majority of members of Congress who are prepared to pass into law that the sex individuals are born with – their chromosomal and physical reality – will take a back seat to how those individuals choose to define their own sexual identity. Henceforth, we'll be done with the idea that there is some objective reality independent of what of any particular individual decides it is.

I once complained that our society was denying morality – right and wrong. Now we're beyond this. We're denying reality in its entirety.

Please, read again the definition of psychosis. We're simply going crazy.

My impulse is to turn to heaven and pray to our God to save us.

But even the reality of our God, to whom the signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 turned for "protection," and to whom they pledged "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor," is widely being brought into question.

The situation is dangerous. Hopefully, this disaster will be stopped.

First, let's appreciate that this is oppression dressed up in language of freedom and justice.

Religious freedom goes out the window if this bill becomes law.

It explicitly defines itself as overriding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that can protect people, such as Christian baker Jack Phillips, from being forced to do commerce that violates their Christian convictions.

There will be no more legal protections for Christians in commerce or in any other circumstance to enable them to avoid complicity with behavior that for them is sin.

A bizarre list of behaviors will become legally protected and enshrined in a new America that will be the total antithesis of the ideals of liberty envisioned by its founders.

I will have to start to worry that my little granddaughter will encounter a man in the restroom who has a right to be there because he thinks he is a woman.

Under the guise of civil rights, our public schools will be forced to teach this sexual nihilism as truth, and teaching the traditional values that have held the American family together will become an actionable offense.

We're talking about civil tyranny, not civil rights.

Civil rights law was designed to protect human dignity by preventing individuals from being reduced to pre-existing realities not connected to their personal choices, such as race. Now with this law, the sexual behavior they choose, and the sex they decide they are, will receive the same protections.

There is a spiritual as well as a legal price that we're already starting to pay for this insanity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the U.S. birthrate is the lowest it has been in 30 years. The general fertility rate, the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, dropped 3 percent from 2016 to 2017, to a record low.

The CDC also reports a 33-percent increase in the rate of suicide from 1999 to 2017.

The culture of meaninglessness, driving perverse legislation such as the Equality Act of 2019, will destroy us.

We must vigilantly fight to prevent it from passing into law, as we recall the words of historian Arnold Toynbee: "An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide."

....interesting article; thoughts?

 

[psalms 91]

I doubt it will get through the senate but this shows how far down the road we have come as a country

 

[Lamb]

I don't think people should be fired from a job or not get hired for a job because they're gay so having the law on their side is a good thing in those instances.

 

[JRT]

We are beginning to understand just how complex human sexuality can be and that old definitions sometimes are no longer sufficient.

 

[tango]

The trouble with an issue like this is that both sides present their case as if it were common sense and the eternal question of whether one person's rights start and the next person's rights stop is kicked into the long grass.

In the majority of instances it makes a lot of sense to say that someone shouldn't be denied employment (or fired from employment) based on nothing more than their choice of sexual partners. Even if someone wants to take a very strictly Christian stance on the matter it makes no more sense to deny a gay man a job than it does to deny a fornicator or an adulterer the same job. People are very prone to get hot under the collar about the nasty icky gay people but not even consider the issue of whether that single guy is living with his girlfriend. Typically people would shrug and say it's none of their business, but apparently it is their business if another single guy is living with his boyfriend. In a minority of instances it makes sense to allow such selection - it's clearly absurd to demand that a church teaching that homosexual acts are sinful must hire a sexually active gay man to be their minister.

Where gender identity and gender expression are concerned the most obvious solution would seem to be one that works for everybody rather than either wishing a group of people would just go away, or imposing upon 99% for the sake of a fraction of 1%. For example, why do we have open plan bathrooms at all? Is it really so much to ask to have cubicles that actually offer some privacy rather than things that seem to be designed to offer as little privacy as possible? Is it really appropriate to have bathroom stalls with walls so low the guy standing at the urinal next to the stand can see over the top? Why not just make all bathrooms unisex, and put in decent partitions? It works for everybody - if you're male you go into the bathroom, pick a cubicle, do what you need to do, wash your hands and leave. If you're female you go into the bathroom, pick a cubicle, do what you need to do, wash your hands and leave. If you identify as a leprechaun today you go into the bathroom, pick a cubicle, do what you need to do, wash your hands and leave. If you're a 47-year-old with a disabled spouse, you go into the bathroom, pick a larger cubicle, help your spouse do what needs to be done, wash your hands and leave. It works for everybody, without demanding that men who think they are women can pretty much go where they want while still making life awkward for people in all sorts of other situations (disabled spouse, disabled opposite-sex child etc). The same applies to places like the changing room at the gym - why is it simply expected that people will undress and change in front of complete strangers based on nothing more than having similar plumbing? Put cubicles in and people can have a bit of privacy, changing areas can be combined, and a few other benefits appear along the way. At the gym my wife and I used to attend we'd share a changing room when we went swimming, which meant we could also share a locker - when people can do that fewer lockers are required. Likewise, why do we assume that college students will share their living/sleeping space with a stranger? Make rooms single-occupancy and the issue of sharing with someone who has male anatomy but says they are female goes away.

A difficulty comes with regulating the interactions between a business and its would-be customers. If we accept the argument that a creative artist should not be required to use their creative talent to promote a message they find objectionable, are there any limits to this? Should a Muslim baker be required to cook chocolate brownies with bacon in them? Should a Jew be required to decorate a cake with Nazi symbolism? If we lean the other way, where does that stop? Should a Muslim baker be permitted to refuse to serve a Jew? Should a store be allowed to post a "no blacks, no Latinos" sign in its window and demand that only white people enter? What happens if a store has multiple checkouts, and this operator refuses to serve black people while that one won't serve Jews and the other one refuses to handle pork products and a fourth refuses to handle alcohol - should every restriction be allowed, should they be clearly posted, or should they only apply at store level? How many times should the black customer who wants a beer with his bacon sandwich have to stand in line only to be told "not here, go away"?

 

[Albion]

I don't think people should be fired from a job or not get hired for a job because they're gay so having the law on their side is a good thing in those instances.

Then perhaps a law that addresses that situation would be in order (as opposed to one that repeals the First Amendment without going through the amendment process).

 

[Webster]

FWIW, I think most Americans are missing the trees for the forest here on this so-called "Equality" Act; after all, with such an innocuous name, who could be against "equality"?

Well, the devil is in details here and there are two big devils that we need to keep an eye on. Under HR 5, (a) the 1964 Civil Rights Act would be amended to include SOGI (sexual orientation & gender identity) protections alongside race, ethnicity, religion, etc., and (b) it would eliminate all religious exemptions currently allowed under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Remember the Masterpiece case from a year or two ago? Well, under this bill, Jack Phillips would've gone to jail for not serving that same-sex couple because he would've been in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...so would've Baronelle Stutzmann, the WA florist (the Arlene's Florist case) and the Kleins in OR (the Sweet Cakes case) and countless other Christian businessmen and women who would be forced to violate their religious beliefs, all in the guise of "equality".

Ask yourself this question, everyone: why is the LGBT community (a/k/a Big Gay) going after Christian businesses and companies and individuals, etc., and not Jewish or Muslim or other religious groups? It is because for them to reign supreme, someone must be made to bend the knee and that, ladies and gentlemen, would be the Christian community in this country; that is their stated goal. They won't say it, but that's their goal.

 

[hedrick]

Remember the Masterpiece case from a year or two ago? Well, under this bill, Jack Phillips would've gone to jail for not serving that same-sex couple because he would've been in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...so would've Baronelle Stutzmann, the WA florist (the Arlene's Florist case) and the Kleins in OR (the Sweet Cakes case) and countless other Christian businessmen and women who would be forced to violate their religious beliefs, all in the guise of "equality".

I'm OK with that. I don't think businesses should be able to not deal with certain people. I don't think sexual orientation is any more deserving of being an exception than race or religion.

It's worth noting that there are already exceptions for messages. Under the 1st amendment, you can't be forced to express a view you disagree with. However baking a cake probably doesn't fall under that exception. (The Supreme Court avoided deciding.)

 

[tango]

I'm OK with that. I don't think businesses should be able to not deal with certain people. I don't think sexual orientation is any more deserving of being an exception than race or religion.

It's worth noting that there are already exceptions for messages. Under the 1st amendment, you can't be forced to express a view you disagree with. However baking a cake probably doesn't fall under that exception. (The Supreme Court avoided deciding.)

Baking a cake isn't a message. Using your creative skills to decorate that cake is arguably a different matter.

For what it's worth I think businesses should be allowed to refuse to serve anyone, but at the same time struggle to see how it works to refuse service to a gay couple unless you're also going to check out every straight couple to make sure their relationship is suitably Biblical. It seems awfully narrow-minded to exclude a gay couple because you disapprove of their relationship but then not worry about whether the straight couple are adulterers or fornicators or tax evaders or whatever else. It sometimes seems like heterosexual couples can break all the rules of relationships and nobody cares because, you know, at least they aren't gay.

 

[tango]

With regard to a lack of religious exemption, it does seem bizarre that a church preaching a message that homosexual acts are sinful should be required to give equal consideration to a sexually active gay man who applied for the position of minister at that church.

 

[maryruthinhilo]

I agree with you. I would add that, we started losing touch with faith and reality in the late'60s when revered collage professor introduce LSD as a doorway into some higher consciousness (When, in reality our highest level of consciousness appears to be one of absolute focus, and absolutely not impaired by any drugs,) and on the heels of the'60s we were indoctrinated into existential humanism and relativism. We were l young and impressionable and wanted others to accept us, to accept or point of view as valid. So when professors told us that in order to be accepted and validated ourselves, we had to likewise accept and validate all other viewpoints, it sounded wise. But it was not, it was foolish. I did NOT WANT to validate the delusional thinking in a psychotic patient. It does not help them. Instead I want to help them learn to accept their own external circumstances that are based in reality so that they can work thru their own pain without fragmenting or becoming psychotic. We all walk thru varying degrees of unreality from time to time when we are very stressed, however, that is usually a sign to us that we need to slow down and find our center, and most likely to problem solve and or do conflict resolution. However, in this culture, people are stuck believing that all points of view are equally valid. They address not. Objective reality exists, whether or not you run up against it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[maryruthinhilo]

Furthermore, we have been given a slight reprieve from this onslaught by the enemy of reality, who we cannot defeat unless we cry out to God, cl repent, confess our sins, and truly repent and turn from our sins, as well as standing up for what we believe. When we hear friends buying in to the PC media's fantasy, we need to hold up the truth! Only the Truth, in the form of Jesus Christ, will set us free.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[hedrick]

With regard to a lack of religious exemption, it does seem bizarre that a church preaching a message that homosexual acts are sinful should be required to give equal consideration to a sexually active gay man who applied for the position of minister at that church.

Churches aren't public accommodations. There doesn't need to be an exception for churches.

 

[hedrick]

In the majority of instances it makes a lot of sense to say that someone shouldn't be denied employment (or fired from employment) based on nothing more than their choice of sexual partners.

FYI: The law extends existing laws to cover gays, etc. The laws on employment have exceptions for religious organizations and specifically for ministers.

 

[tango]

FYI: The law extends existing laws to cover gays, etc. The laws on employment have exceptions for religious organizations and specifically for ministers.

What laws require extension to cover gays, and just what do you mean by "etc" in this context?

It's one thing to figure that a man knows for himself whether he would prefer a male or female partner - this doesn't affect anyone else. The only proviso (which should be the same for anyone) is that his partner/s must be consenting adults.

Where the whole matter of gender identity is concerned it makes no sense at all to have gender segregation in places like changing rooms, bathrooms and the like only to then allow a self-selecting group to ignore the segregation and use whichever facility takes their fancy. I'm surprised the issues with the transgender thing didn't surface earlier with the whole gay thing.

I can only imagine the outcry if, say, a class of 16-year-old girls in a high school gym class were supervised in the shower by a male teacher. The howling about it would be unimaginable. But why is this? Is it because the teacher might see some "girlie parts"? Probably not - the chances are the male teacher has seen girlie parts before. Maybe it's because he might be attracted to them in a way that's a bit creepy. But if that's the case why is it acceptable for a gay male teacher to supervise teenage boys in the shower? What's the difference? And if that male teacher says that his gender identity is female (and if gender is nothing more than a social construct that is fluid his gender identity could change from one day to the next or even from one hour to the next) does it suddenly make it OK to expect teenage girls to shower in front of him?

All this just keeps pointing back to the solution that seems best all round, which is to just give everybody privacy. No need to shower under the watchful eye of a teacher, whatever is between their legs or between their ears. No need to shower in front of classmates whether they are male, female, undecided or if they identify as a unicorn today.

I'm also wondering when the feminist and transgender agendas are going to collide and which will win. It seems rather curious to think of feminist groups demanding "women only" spaces for so long now, only to find that a man can say he identifies as female and go right on in. If a person's "gender identity" is whatever they say it is and nobody has any right to contradict it, the violent rapist only has to say he is female and walk on in to an area where he can be confident of finding lots of potential victims with few potential protectors.

 

[hedrick]

It would take quite a bit of research to get all the details, but I'm pretty sure it's approximately the following:

* public accommodations
* use of facilities run by governments except for schools
* assignment to schools; this was originally because of segregated schools (as I read the text, by the way, this only applies to schools run by the government; otherwise you couldn't have religious schools, since discriminating on religion is prohibited also)
* discrimination under federally assisted programs
* employment (I believe excluding religious organizations and churches)
* civil service
* housing
* credit
* juries

The most controversial requirement is probably

“(2) (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.”; and

This applies to most of those activities, but you'd want to ask a lawyer how it applies to schools. What's odd about that section is that the original act is about assignment to schools, not operations within the school. It's not clear to me just how the modifications in the Equality Act actually apply to that section.

 

[tango]

The most controversial requirement is probably

“(2) (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.”; and

Given the whole purpose of segregation by gender is to make sure you don't get men in the women's room and vice versa, one has to wonder why they even bother with separate facilities for men and women if either can just claim to be the other and walk right on in. Provision for a tiny minority becomes little more than a charter for voyeurs.

 

[hedrick]

Given the whole purpose of segregation by gender is to make sure you don't get men in the women's room and vice versa, one has to wonder why they even bother with separate facilities for men and women if either can just claim to be the other and walk right on in. Provision for a tiny minority becomes little more than a charter for voyeurs.

I don't think you can just go into any rest room. You have to be someone who identifies with that gender. The reality of schools is such that only a small number of kids who are serious about it are going to do that.

Of course you don't actually see much in most rest rooms.

I asked my middle school age Sunday School kids whether they had any transgender kids in school. There had been one. I asked if anyone at school cared which rest room they used. No. I think this is a good target for rabble-rousing, but the reality isn't so serious.

Of course views on this are going to depend upon whether you accept current medical views on transgender identity. I do. Conservative Christians feel free to reject whatever they don't like.

 

[tango]

I don't think you can just go into any rest room. You have to be someone who identifies with that gender. The reality of schools is such that only a small number of kids who are serious about it are going to do that.

If gender is a social construct only then as an individual with male parts and male facial hair what exactly stops me from claiming to be female and walking into the ladies' locker room?

Of course you don't actually see much in most rest rooms.

Perhaps not yet.

I asked my middle school age Sunday School kids whether they had any transgender kids in school. There had been one. I asked if anyone at school cared which rest room they used. No. I think this is a good target for rabble-rousing, but the reality isn't so serious.

The trouble is there may be one now but what about tomorrow? Even if there is one, why should teenage girls be expected to undress in front of someone who is physically male even if they do identify as female?

Of course views on this are going to depend upon whether you accept current medical views on transgender identity. I do. Conservative Christians feel free to reject whatever they don't like.

I don't really think it's anything to do with current medical views. The bigger issue is why people should be expected to undress in front of strangers at all, whatever anatomical parts they have. Even if the system is never abused (and, you know, why would any teenage boy come up with a wheeze to look at naked girls in the shower?) the person who is physically male but genuinely identifies as female is still a problem for the actual biological females who are apparently supposed to undress in front of them just because someone in a gray suit far away said so.

It would seem like a far better solution for everyone, transgendered or not, to have individual facilities within a larger room. It would fully meet the needs of the transgendered without drawing any extra attention to them, while also meeting the needs for a host of other people as well. Changing rooms become simple - go into the room, pick a cubicle, get changed, and emerge. Whether you emerge in a speedo, a leotard, a one-piece ladies swimsuit, makes no difference. Everybody is treated exactly the same - nobody is put in the awkward position of presenting as one gender but being expected to use the other facility, nobody is expected to undress in front of someone who makes them uncomfortable (whether that's a transgender person or just the creepy person who stares), and along the way people with a disabled spouse or opposite-gender child are catered for as well. It seems like a win-win-win situation where the idea that people should just use whatever facility corresponds to their stated "gender identity" creates a win-lose-lose situation.

 

[hedrick]

I don't really think it's anything to do with current medical views.

Sure it does. The whole argument is based on the idea that transgenders aren't actually their identified gender. But it really doesn't matter for purposes of this discussion which gender a person "really" is. What matters is which gender they're attracted to. And that's not so easy to deal with, because transgenders aren't all the same. Not letting them in a particular bathroom may actually force them into being with the gender they're attracted to. Or not, as I'll note below.

The bigger issue is why people should be expected to undress in front of strangers at all, whatever anatomical parts they have. Even if the system is never abused (and, you know, why would any teenage boy come up with a wheeze to look at naked girls in the shower?) the person who is physically male but genuinely identifies as female is still a problem for the actual biological females who are apparently supposed to undress in front of them just because someone in a gray suit far away said so.

You may be right that in the end we'll do everything in private booths of some sort.

But I'd like to point out that sexual attraction, which seems to be the issue, is not necessarily associated with gender, either birth gender or gender identity. In fact, gay kids are a lot more common than transgender ones. They ought to create the same issue. Of course in communities that see this as a problem, it's unlikely that most gay kids will say who they are. I think you're stuck with the fact that there are going to be kids undressing in rooms with other kids that are attracted to their gender (although that doesn't mean that they attracted to all the kids in the dressing room). Rejecting transgender identity isn't going to solve it. No law is going to fix it, and it has always been that way. If that's unacceptable, you're going to need individual changing booths of some sort.

I still think it's a panic for no good reason.

People are trying to force other people into a neat pattern where everyone is born male or female and they're always attracted to the other gender. But the world isn't that way, and pretending it is isn't going to accomplish much.