A bill known as the “Equality Act,” passed in the House of Representatives last May, would give gays and transgendered persons protection under federal civil rights law. The Equality Act would protect people’s subjective beliefs about their sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In what can only be taken as an intentional rebuke of Christians who subscribe to Scripture’s moral code, the bill explicitly strips out religious liberty protections in current federal law.
In response, several groups have proposed a measure known as the “Fairness for All” Act, which would privilege gays and transgendered persons under federal law while still preserving religious liberty protections. The GC and NAD religious liberty departments were instrumental in drafting the legislation and strongly support its passage. Should Christians be lobbying for this legislation?
The Equality Act
The “Equality Act” was passed by the Democrat-controlled United States House of Representatives on May 17, 2019; it would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit “discrimination on the basis of the sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, . . . as well as because of sex-based stereotypes." The bill was then sent to the Senate, where it is unlikely to pass.
The “Equality Act” is less about protecting gays and transgendered persons than about enforcing ideological conformity. It is intended to suppress and punish religious convictions on sexuality, marriage, and human nature, particularly the Bible-based based belief that gender is binary. In cases in which the demands of SOGI ideology conflict with Christian beliefs, the Equality Act would eliminate the right of conscientious objectors to seek an exemption based on the free exercise protections of the First Amendment, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Any attempt by conscientious florists, photographers and bakers to not participate in same-sex weddings would be firmly quashed by this legislation.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed largely in order to prevent places of “public accommodation”—hotels, restaurants, stores, service stations, etc.—from barring black customers. A strong social convention in the deep south forced owners of these establishments to discriminate against blacks, for fear of losing their white customers and facing social and commercial ostracism. The Equality Act would ban discrimination against gays and transgendered persons in “public accommodations.” But that term, experts believe, could be defined to include religious schools and colleges, and sometimes even churches, if they are used for public purposes such as voting precincts. Religiously affiliated schools and other faith-based organizations would face lawsuits over policies on gay, lesbian or transgender students, customers or employees.
Churches and other religiously affiliated organizations could be deemed to be in violation the “Equality Act” if:
they require their employees to refrain from homosexual behavior;
they refuse to open women’s restrooms to men who identify as women;
they use pronouns consistent with an employee’s biological sex rather than their professed gender identity; or
they refuse to cover puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and “sex reassignment” surgery in their health insurance plans.
The “Equality Act” would forbid college students from using federal tuition assistance at religious educational institutions that “discriminate” based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Conservative religious schools would likely lose federal student aid if they continued to prohibit homosexual behavior or decline to allow biological males who identify as women to play on women’s sports teams.
Women’s shelters will lose federal funding if they decline to let biological men who identify as women share communal sleeping facilities with women. Faith-based adoption and foster placement agencies will lose federal funding if they follow their religious beliefs and place children only with married, opposite-sex couples.
The “Equality Act” is a grave threat to religious liberty in the United States. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that it is a deliberate attempt to crush conservative religious beliefs on sexuality, beliefs that have already been marginalized and largely confined to churches and religiously affiliated institutions. Constitutional expert Douglas Laycock, who has taught as several prestigious law schools, and is now at the University of Virginia, states that the Equality Act:
“goes very far to stamp out religious exemptions. It regulates religious non-profits. And then it says that [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] does not apply to any claim under the Equality Act. This would be the first time Congress has limited the reach of RFRA. This is not a good faith attempt to reconcile competing interests. It is an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side.”
The bill’s drafters, by refusing to include any religious exemptions, and by repealing existing religious freedom protections such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 [deep dive on RFRA here], are clearly signaling their intent to punish religious organizations and individuals who dissent from prevailing opinion on questions of marriage, sexual morality, and the distinction between the sexes.
Even our Seventh-day Adventist religious liberty establishment—which sat out the culture wars, and thus helped create the present nightmare culture of aggressive sodomy and perversion—recognizes that the Equality Act would be a religious liberty disaster. The NAD religious liberty department writes:
“There is no doubt that such legislation if passed would, by design, leave very little protection to those whose religious beliefs are out of step with current social attitudes. It would, for instance, impact the ability of religious institutions to make hiring decisions that take applicants’ religious beliefs into account. It could lead to the government or professional bodies withholding accreditation to religious schools and organizations. It could hamper the church in its ability to run community service programs or put its disaster response institutions at risk. The mass of litigation that would inevitably arise in order to resolve these issues would be long, expensive, disruptive, and destructive.”
So, the NAD is endorsing an alternative bill called the “Fairness for All” Act.
The Fairness for All Act
The Fairness for All Act (“FFAA”) is a compromise measure that would add homosexuals and transgendered persons as protected categories under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it would provide religious exemptions from several of the act’s provisions. Specifically, the Act would:
Protect Religious Education
Accreditation cannot be denied to schools because they uphold biblical standards.
Can maintain housing policies based on religious principles.
Cannot be penalized by federal or state governments for teaching according to their religious mission.
Protects Religious Employers — Institutions Can Maintain Employment Standards
Religious employers, including schools, can continue to require their employees to uphold and adhere to the institution’s religious views and practices.
Protects Religious Employees — Passes the Workplace Religious Freedom Act
People of faith who need accommodations in the workplace (such as Sabbath off) get the same legal protections as people who are disabled. Currently the law allows employers to discriminate if it requires more than a minimal cost to accommodate.
Protects employees in the workplace who express views on marriage and other religious topics.
Protects Small Businesses Owned by People of Faith
Allows owners of small businesses (less than 15 employees) to continue earning a living without being forced to provide services that violate their religious beliefs.
Protects Healthcare Institutions
Healthcare providers will not be required to provide and/or perform medical procedures that violate their beliefs. However, they will still be required to treat all patients, as they currently do, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
According to the NAD’s press release, Adventists attorneys affiliated with both the NAD and the GC had a hand in drafting the FFAA, and it really is a vast improvement over the Equality Act in terms of ensuring statutory protection for religious freedom. In addition to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the FFAA is supported by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Evangelicals, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church). The measure was introduced by Utah representative Chris Stewart on December 6th, 2019, and was announced the same day.
Notwithstanding the FFAA’s protections for religious freedom, should the Seventh-day Adventist denomination be lobbying for including gays and transgendered persons as protected classes under federal civil rights law?
I don’t think so, for several reasons, some of which I enumerate below, and in part 2 of this article.
Transgendered Persons Should Not be a Protected Class
a. Legally Enforced Medical Child Abuse
Adding gender identity ideology [deep dive on gender ideology here] to federal civil rights law would politicize medicine, and parents will be unable to find therapeutic support for their gender dysphoric children that does not involve automatic affirmation and medical intervention. Doctors will be forced to treat gender dysphoria by prescribing puberty blockers for children starting at age 11, opposite sex hormones at age 16, and “sex-reassignment” surgery at age 18. Side effects of this drug regimen include sterility, loss of bone density, cognitive decline, and increased risk of cancer. Studies show that the overwhelming majority of cases of childhood gender dysphoria (98% of boys and 88% of girls) resolve spontaneously by late teens or adulthood. Subjecting minor children to puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones is horrifically abusive, and should not be made the law of the land even if doctors with religious objections are exempted from the law.
b. Destruction of Women’s Athletics and Female Privacy
Under the FFAA, biological males who identify as females could sue under federal civil rights law unless they are allowed to compete against female athletes in female sports competitions. We have already seen that this has the effect of destroying the chances of real, biological women to win and achieve excellence, affirmation, and self-confidence in sex segregated sports. When men run, or swim, or lift weights against women, the men win; the biological facts of life cannot be repealed by a Canutian decree. Gender Identity as a civil right effectively destroys sex-segregated athletics competitions.
The FFAA would also abolishes female privacy. Enshrining gender identity into federal civil rights law would create a nationwide transgender bathroom policy, giving men who claim to be women blanket permission to enter women’s bathrooms. This is wrong, cruel, and dangerous. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how male sexual predators will use the law to gain easy access to women and girls. Men claiming to be women will also have a right to stay in battered women’s shelters, creating needless and pointless distress for women who have already been traumatized by male violence.
c. Legally Mandated use of Gibberish Language
Employers could be compelled to use “preferred pronouns” according to gender identity, meaning, people would be forced by law to refer to a man as “she” or a woman as “he,” or a person as “they” or “ze” or “fae.” An individual could claim a hostile work environment if he or she is not referred to by a preferred pronoun, regardless how bizarre the neologism. This is no different from requiring teachers and employers to refer to someone who believes he is an 18th Century French emperor as “Napoleon.”
Men are men, and women are women. Sex is determined at the moment of conception and integral to every cell of a person’s body. A person who thinks they are of the opposite sex, or should be in an opposite sex body, is objectively and indisputably mentally ill. To enshrine transgender ideology as the law of the land is to legally privilege insanity. It is so obviously destructive to society that I believe its backers, at the higher levels, are not simply nihilistic but are actively working toward civilizational destruction as a precursor to erecting their Utopia. But you need not agree with me on that interpretation to see that the SDA Church should not be lobbying to enshrine gender identity ideology—gender confusion—in federal civil rights law.
Adventists, who uphold the truth of the literal creation narrative, should understand that “in the beginning, God created them male and female” (Gen. 5:2; Mark 10:6) and that attempts to blur sexual identity are a blatant rebellion against, and an attempt to destroy, the created sexual order. We would not be in favor of a law that compelled everyone else to attend church on Sunday even if objecting Seventh-day Adventists were exempted from obeying that law; likewise, we should not be in favor of law compelling everyone else to accede to gender confusion and insanity, even if we are exempted in our own churches and institutions. A bad law is a bad law, regardless whether it is part of log-rolling scheme to secure more legal protection for ourselves.
Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come,
but woe to the person through whom they come! Matthew 18:7