It feels like the Democrats haven’t done anything since taking control of the House this year. They’ve leveled a lot of ridiculous scrutiny at the President, and not much else.
At least, that’s the portrayal the media wants you to see. The truth is that the Democrats in the House have been passing quite a few bills. Each is more ambitious than the last, and all of them threaten the well-being of our entire country.
Thankfully, a conservative Senate is keeping them in check, but if you underestimate the will of the Democrats, you might also underestimate the importance of Congressional elections next year. That’s why the media is so quiet on bills that are getting through the House. Here’s the latest bad idea from the left.
The Bill
The new bill is officially called the Equality Act. Before we get into it, you should know that it has already passed the House. It fortunately faces an uphill battle in the Senate, but it’s important to not take these things lightly.
The Equality Act specifically tries to expand on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which in theory sounds like a good thing. But looks can be deceiving. It’s a bill, so it has a lot of components, but the two parts that merit the most attention expand civil protections to people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Sexual orientation is an interesting protection to provide. Since gay marriage was recognized on a national level, the real impediments to so-called gay rights were removed. Under the law, a homosexual relationship is in all ways equal to one that is heterosexual. Making homosexuality a protected class is unnecessary, but you already knew that. This bill tries to make discrimination by sexual orientation illegal, but that’s already the case.
Gender Identity
The substantially larger issue ties to gender identity. This bill has plenty of problems, but the king of them all is the language trying to defend transgender individuals from discrimination.
The first thing to remember is that discrimination by gender is already illegal, and there are a lot of affirmative action statutes in place to give women a leg up in the world.
The Equality Act uses explicit wording to extend those rights and protections based on a person’s gender identity instead of actual gender. If nothing else, this is extremely exploitable. There is no scientific or reliable way to confirm a person’s identity.
In fact, the bill makes it clear that each individual is the ultimate authority on their own identity. This means that a man can claim to be a woman without any commitment. No hormone therapy or surgery is necessary. They simply make the claim and they can then participate in exclusively female activities, glean resources earmarked specifically for women and otherwise exploit the system.
Some people might point out that this is a strong argument against the clearly discriminatory practices that we call affirmative action, but this bill takes things too far. Is anyone actually upset that the Girl Scouts has scholarships exclusively for their members? Well, the Equality Act throws a wrench into all of that.
Expansion of Power
Exploiting affirmative action and the unofficial protected status of women in this country is only a single way this bill is going wrong. The ultimate danger comes from giving Congress and regulatory bodies ambiguous control over our daily lives.
It all comes back to that problem of identity. The government can now accuse you of discrimination and use that as grounds for all kinds of abuse of power. The burden of proof disappears. Anyone can claim any identity they want.
Since this bill goes out of its way to remove clear and concise definitions from the law, it obscures any hardline protections for citizens from their government.
Essentially, this utilizes the same mentality as hate speech laws. When things are gray and murky, the government need only win in the court of public opinion. The court of law becomes their uncontested domain.
If you think Democrats lack the ambition to exploit this bill to go after political enemies, then you really aren’t paying attention. The Equality Act is much more than an ill-advised, easily exploited law. It’s a power grab.
Here’s a tip, and it’s more important now than ever. Whenever a liberal or leftist makes a proposal in the name of fairness or equality, it’s not really about either. It will always prove to be an attempt to expand their own political power.
