Later this week, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives will vote on The Equality Act, one of President Biden’s promised legislative priorities for his first 100 days in office. While Democrats present The Equality Act as legislation designed to protect LGTBQ people from discrimination, if passed the law would prove devasting to girls and women.
Given the details of the bill, a better name for this monstrosity of a law would be the “Destroy Our Daughters Act.” That’s because the specific harms that await American daughters all flow from the core problem of The Equality Act: Congress is attempting to enshrine in the law a physical impossibility.
It is physically impossible for a male to become a female, or vice versa, and even a world fluent in Orwellian-speak cannot overcome that reality. Yet that is what some in the 117th Congress of the United States proclaims possible in the proposed Equality Act.
“Sex,” the bill says, includes “gender identity,” which the legislation then describes so broadly it is limited only by a person’s imagination. “Gender identity” in the bill means “the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the indiviudals’ designated sex at birth.”
The Equality Act then treats an individual’s self-determined “gender identity” as the individual’s “sex” under the law, and requires Americans to do the same in virtually every aspect of civil society, including public accommodations, public facilities, public education, all federally assisted programs, and employment.
Two substantive provisions of The Equality Act make this redefined reality especially threatening to women and girls. First, The Equality Act provides that “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.”
Under the law, any man or boy claiming a female gender identity could access store dressing rooms, recreational centers’ locker rooms, or school bathrooms. There would be nothing a state, city, school board, or private business could do about this because federal law trumps state law and this federal law defines public accommodations and public facilities so broadly the reach is near-universal.
The second devastating mandate of the Equality Act concerns what is called “bona fide occupational qualification” under Title VII. Title VII prohibits sex discrimination in employment but allows for an employer to make employment decisions based on “sex” if sex is considered a “bona fide occupational qualification.” Sex constitutes a “bona fide occupational qualification” in cases involving intimate care of clients and customers, such as personal caregivers in nursing homes, or chaperones, counselors, or coaches with access to children in locker rooms or during overnight trips.
The Equality Act expressly provides that where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification, employees qualify for such a position based on their gender identity, not their sex. So, under this proposed bill, an adult man who claims a female gender identity may seek and obtain a job that is limited to women applicants because of the sensitive and intimate job functions involved.
Americans should ask themselves: Do they want a man professing a female gender identity employed in a position so intimate that the law allows an employer to limit the job to female applicants? Parents should ask themselves: Do they want a male coach adorned in women’s attire having access to their daughters in the locker room, on overnight trips, and in lodging at summer camps? That is exactly what The Equality Act demands.
While not as horrifying as the emotional and physical risks American daughters would face should this law pass, from a fairness perspective, the Equality Act also threatens to destroy women’s sports.
We are already witnessing the spectacle of muscle-bound boys sprinting past female opponents in track events in states that have allowed an individual’s gender identity to trump sex. This exhibition of the absurd will only grow under The Equality Act, for two reasons.
First, the Equality Act trumps all state laws, preventing states (or school boards) from addressing the issue on a local level. Second, The Equality Act defines “gender identity” so broadly, a male athlete need only declare his identity as “female” and he qualifies to compete “equally” with girls.
The Left Women’s Liberation Front highlights this problem, noting “The bill doesn’t mention individuals with clinically diagnosed gender dysphoria, or undertaking surgical or hormonal transition, thus making clear that self-declared gender identity would be sufficient to claim protected legal status.”
WOLF calls for its members to oppose this legislation, declaring it’s because: “This bill will also end sports programs and scholarships set aside for women and girls. All such programs will have to admit men and boys who identify themselves as women or girls. Such programs will no longer meet their intended purpose of protecting the rights of women and girls by redressing historical inequality of opportunity.”
The end of women’s sports programs is but a patch to the psychiatric, emotional, and physical harm young girls will face if the Equality Act passes and extreme gender ideology becomes the standard.
“The percentage of young people, especially girls, reporting a struggle with gender dysphoria has increased suddenly and dramatically, in an obvious shift from the previously low number of young people identifying as transgender,” notes the Daily Signal. As journalist Abigail Shrier explains in her new book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” there is a contagion especially affecting “teen girls who are struggling with anxiety and depression.”
As Shrier explains, “All across the West, adolescent girls are suddenly identifying as ‘trans’ with friends, clamoring for hormones and surgeries.” The contagion effect will only get worse if Congress passes the Equality Act, with more young girls seeking experimental treatments that have lifetime consequences.
America’s girls deserve better than to be sacrificed on the altar of the extreme transgender movement that holds the support of powerful politicians and corporate media. To date, all but a few parents have remained silent, either out of misplaced compassion for those declaring themselves transgender or out of fear of public shaming.
But if average Americans don’t rise up now and make their voices heard, it will soon be too late—and their daughters will suffer the consequences.
