There Is Nothing ‘Equal’ About The ‘Equality Act’

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Equality Act, a bill which aims to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes.”

The legislation passed in the House by 224 votes to 206, with three Republicans (Reps. John Katko (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)) joining the Democrats in favor.

While the Left celebrates, we must understand that those who are pushing for the Equality Act are playing a very clever and extraordinarily manipulative game, and are simultaneously willing to tear down the foundation of the United States in the process.

This game is an emotional and ideological “bait and switch,” shrouded in ambiguity, verbal contortion, and deceit.

The “bait and switch” element is provided by the attempt to portray the legislation as an answer to the question “do transgender people deserve to exist in our society?” Nothing was more indicative of this association than OREO Cookie’s inane tweet, “Trans people exist.”

Like so many of the Left’s policy positions, they are presented as binary questions along imaginary lines, making it easy to lazily mischaracterize critics as inherently evil. Don’t support our gun control policies? I guess you want children to die! Oppose abortion? You want women to die in back-alley abortions, don’t you? Reject the Equality Act? You don’t even want transgender people to exist!

The Equality Act is dripping in vague language which hands further power to those who hope to wield it to achieve political objectives. The over-broad category of “LGBTQ” is used to encapsulate as many potential victims as possible. Discrimination is defined as a variety of subjective and imprecise acts, including “unequal or unfair treatment,” “differential pricing for substantially similar products,” and credit checks which “reveal a former name.”

This language, alongside countless other examples, is deliberately used to move into the Left’s preferred arena of judgement — one where intent and context are meaningless details which fade into insignificance beneath the shadow of one’s “lived experience.”

Then, words themselves are manipulated to further these objectives. “Public accommodations” are expanded to include retail stores, online retailers, stadiums, and transportation service providers. The word “stadium” is replaced by “stadium or other place of or establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, public gathering, or public display,” with “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program” now deemed an appropriate target of “anti-discrimination” controls.

At the same time, the definition of words are twisted further, with sex defined as “a sex stereotype; pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition; sexual orientation or gender identity; and sex characteristics, including intersex traits.”

Finally, there comes the deceit hiding in plain sight: “Equality.”

The truth is that there is nothing about the Equality Act which promotes equality in the context of an American system of values. In order for this version of equality to be achieved, foundational principles of the United States must first be sacrificed. And this, frankly, is the entire point.

The Equality Act is the Left’s opportunity to beat down those who have scuppered their plans of ideological domination in recent years. It is their chance to punish The Little Sisters of the Poor for daring to oppose abortion, or to force “deplorable” bakers or florists into submission.

There is nothing “equal” about the Equality Act. The reality is quite the opposite, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of freedom of religion — one of the foundational pillars of the country’s founding — in an act of immoral betrayal, telling religious Americans in no uncertain terms that their religious rights are trumped by the unscientific and ever-changing demands of a growing radical Left.

Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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