Congress must vote no on the Equality Act which undermines women, science, and civil liberties

The US House votes on the controversial Equality Act today. The bill, which will amend Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes, will then go to the Senate. If passed, the Equality Act will, under the guise or prohibiting discrimination, undermine women, science, and civil liberties.

The Equality Act is vague, broad and would trump all other state laws. This means that all taxpayer funded organizations, including public schools, universities, and more, would need to make facilities, including bathrooms and locker rooms, available to transgender females or the school could be sued for discrimination. The privacy and safety of young girls in school or young women at university will be second to a law instituted to protect those who claim a different identity than the one with which they were born.

In this prescient Newsweek piece, self-described "agnostic feminist leader" Natasha Chart, of the Women's Liberation Front, and an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, Yaakov Menken, firmly agree that the Equality Act is a "fatally flawed, and even hateful, piece of legislation."

If the Equality Act passes, it also means transgender females would be able to compete against biological females on teams associated with public schools and universities—thereby erasing the powerful, innate, physiological differences between boys and girls that give boys an inherent advantage when it comes to most sports. The differences between males and females, in terms of pure physiology are documented by anyone with eyes and scientists: "The differences between the sexes in body composition are well known: males typically have proportionately more muscle mass, more bone mass, and a lower percentage of body fat than women."

If girls are females and transgender females are also given the same rights as females, then laws meant to protect females—like Title IX—are usurped and pointless. The rights of females, over half of the US population—their privacy, safety, and competitions—will be erased in the name of prohibiting discrimination of a select few transgender females. The Equality Act equates gender identity, which posits that gender is fluid, with race and sex. This will backfire eventually because it completely upends the scientific community but in the meantime, the consequences in our culture will be disastrous.

Finally, the Equality Act will destroy the civil liberties of religiously orthodox people. Whether medical doctors, insurance companies, a private business owner, or a parent, the Equality Act will force people who embrace traditional beliefs, to either violate their conscience and honor the Equality Act in their medical practice, while helping their child with homework, or in the private spa they operate, or be labeled a bigot and face punitive damages.

For example, under the Equality Act, a spa owner would feel like she had to remain open to treating a transgender female's body parts, even if she previously only served biological women, or face fines. Don't believe me? It's already a thing in Canada. Under the Equality Act, if a parent sees a child's pro-gender identity school curriculum and wants to opt that child out, they, the parent may not be allowed to—after all, discrimination is against the law. You see where this is going.

Chart and Rabbi Menken mention this in their Newsweek piece too. "The Equality Act similarly demands that biological men be given access to women's bathrooms, changing facilities and shelters. Religiously motivated Orthodox Jewish practices, such as separate seating at public events and separate hours for exercise facilities (especially swimming pools) would be illegal. Incredibly, the Equality Act specifically strips away protection of religious practice guaranteed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

The Equality Act sounds nice, even, benign—who would oppose an anti-discrimination bill?—but it promotes anything but kindness, equality, and acceptance: If the US Senate passes the bill, it will erase women, undermine science, and violate the civil liberties of millions of orthodox people.