The purpose of the proposed Equality Act currently in front of Congress is to add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It would have catastrophic consequences for girls and women by creating a new protected class and providing special rights to people who are confused about biology.
Sexual orientation and gender identity ideology uses emotions and feelings – not biology and science – to identify and group people not as individuals, but as a brand-new minority group. This current debate on the Equality Act helps to clarify the true meaning of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which failed ratification in 1979.
ERA was advertised in the 1970s as a benefit for women because it would have codified rights for women in the U.S. Constitution. That sales pitch failed because the text of the amendment does not include the word “woman.” ERA demands “equality of rights … on the basis of sex,” and this vague language is open to many interpretations, as sex has multiple definitions.
In truth, nothing in ERA would provide any additional rights for women. It would actually harm women, particularly vulnerable and at-risk women, by eliminating single-sex correctional facilities and shelters, labor laws that favor women and pregnancy accommodations, school athletics and privacy, government set-asides and programs for women. ERA would also require girls to register for the selective service and be subject to military combat. ERA lost in the 1970s because American women did not want to lose rights.
Both the ERA and the Equality Act are solely about “sex” and its ever-changing definition. Unlike the heated debates in the 1970s that dismissed other definitions of “sex” as irrelevant, no one can claim today that ERA would not have an impact on every law concerning sexual orientation and gender identity. ERA is not about women.
Thanks to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s over-reaching decision in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020, the legal definition of sex in Title VII now no longer refers to X and Y chromosomes, but how-I-feel-at-moment. Anyone, not just Aretha Franklin, now can feel like a natural woman on any day.
Sexual orientation and gender identity did not exist in 1964, when everyone recognized that “sex” was a biological definition. Yet the Supreme Court has discovered brand-new definitions of sex that can be easily changed and are in defiance of the law’s original intent.
The Supreme Court accepted the non-scientific notion that changing one’s sex is biologically possible. Every cell of our body has a Y or X chromosome, no matter how many hormones we might ingest or how many surgeries, or how many changes of clothing. A change of gender identity can only be superficial.
All girls and women lose when sex is redefined because we lose our privacy. Neither ERA nor the Equality Act are bipartisan, nor are they supported by the majority of Americans. Instead, the progressive wing of the Democrat Party is pushing an ideology that demeans and devalues women.
Why should women step aside for men pretending to be women to take advantage of laws designed for women? Why should women have to go to the back of the bus so that a newly discovered protected class can take their seats?
In many ways, the purpose of the Equality Act is to enact the substance of ERA by legislation. Amending the U.S. Constitution is difficult and is only successful when there is a broad consensus of Americans. Amendments cannot be snuck in the back door, as ratification requires a supermajority of Congress and a supermajority of state legislatures.
ERA failed to garner enough states when it was pending in the 1970s. Its proponents recognize that they cannot ratify ERA in Congress today by the required two-thirds vote. So if the Equality Act passes Congress by a simple majority, these proponents hope that courts will interpret the Equality Act as if ERA is part of the Constitution.
Now the truth is self-evident: ERA was always about erasing women and eliminating any social or legal distinction that protected women. ERA is actually a transgender amendment, not a women’s amendment, since women would gain nothing and transgender people would gain new privileges.
The T is now the engine driving the train of LGBT, and L will surely lose when biological men invade their space. ERA is not a feel-good amendment for the ladies, but an attempt to legislate a restructuring of human nature. Recognizing that males and females have biological differences is not discrimination, but reality.
The consequences of these new laws range from the absurd – men with bad wigs attempting to gain access to the Miss USA pageant – to the abusive, when vulnerable girls and women lose their privacy because Congress has dictated that there can be no distinction on the basis of sex.
ERA is essentially a sexist amendment because it would strip women of their legal and cultural rights. Equality of opportunity is lost if Congress grants men the power and access to bully into women’s spaces. Whether it is ERA or the Equality Act, girls and women will lose and men who pretend to be women will win.
