The so-called Equality Act is continuing to make its way through Congress — after passing the House last month, it was heard this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Equality Act is a serious threat to the safety and privacy of women and children, the lives of unborn babies, the health and welfare of children and adults with gender dysphoria, and the First Amendment rights of Americans everywhere.
Defenders of the Equality Act have consistently dismissed religious freedom concerns as alarmist. But the Equality Act, by specifically excluding itself from the religious freedom safeguards in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, would force faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to either stop practicing in accordance with their religious beliefs or close their doors altogether, would attempt to bully private religious schools into touting the LGBT agenda, and would threaten conscience protections for healthcare providers and religious hospitals. This Act would be disastrous for religious freedom.
Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation reports that the Equality Act would “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity within “places of public accommodation,” which, in a break with legal tradition, would include churches, mosques, temples, and other places of worship.” In Wednesday’s hearing, Mary Hasson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center pointed out that expanding the definition of “places of public accommodation” to include places of worship opens them up to discrimination suits. Hasson notes that the Equality Act “ties the hands of religious believers and says, ‘You are not welcome to live your faith in the public square.’”
The right to practice one’s beliefs is essential to religious freedom. As Andrew T. Walker has pointed out, those who insist that the Equality Act does not harm religious freedom “so narrowly define religion as to make it reducible to a time and place, not a fundamental commitment that informs all aspects of life.
Religious freedom is far more than just the right to believe something in the quiet of our own homes or the right to gather for worship once a week. If we truly believe something, then it transforms us and touches every aspect of our lives.
If someone’s beliefs are penalized and pushed out of the public square, “religious freedom” becomes nothing more than a pretense. True religious freedom requires that people have the freedom to live in accordance with what they believe. For Christians, this means embracing and living in accordance with the truth that God created humans male and female, that male and female are beautifully distinct and therefore not interchangeable, and that a person’s sex cannot be changed. Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, rightly points out that these beliefs are not just held by Christians, but by Orthodox Jews and Muslims, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Mormons. Not only that, but the differences between men and women, and the fact that a person’s sex cannot be changed are not just religious teachings, but objective reality.
The Equality Act would harm people from many different religions, but would also harm non-religious people who take a stand for objective reality, including mental health professionals who question the practice of “transitioning” children with gender dysphoria, women who speak up for their safety and privacy, athletes and coaches who point out the inherent unfairness of destroying Title IX, and many other people from many other walks of life.
We cannot be silent about this. The Equality Act would demand that people live in accordance with lies and would relegate religion to private spaces. In order to argue that the Equality Act does not harm religious freedom, its proponents have redefined religious freedom so that it is no longer the freedom to live, speak, and act in accordance with one’s beliefs. This is not true religious freedom but a cheap replacement of it.
(Image: Naassom Azevedo, Unsplash)
