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CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMEN: Tell them to oppose the Equality Act! Click to contact your federal politicians, now.

ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON, February 24, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — With control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Democrats are finally poised to enact their extreme anti-family and anti-life agenda into law.

This week, House Democrats are expected to approve the Equality Act, originally passed in the Democrat-controlled House two years ago, which supporters tout as the most sweeping pro-LGBT bill in American history. The Equality Act also would be a major win for abortion providers by effectively codifying Roe v. Wade, according to numerous pro-life groups.

Democrats need 60 votes to pass the legislation in the evenly-split Senate, requiring at least 10 GOP defections. Senate Democrats could, however, take the unprecedented step of lowering the 60-vote hurdle to a majority vote, as many promised to do on the 2020 campaign trail.

If the Equality Act makes it through Congress, the Biden administration has made clear that it will be approved by the White House and become law, ushering in a hard-left onslaught against religious rights in the United States.

Here are five things all Catholics and Christians should know about the drastically pro-LGBT, pro-abortion Equality Act that could become law in a matter of days.

It would force Catholic institutions to hire transgenders, female “priests” — or face sanctions

The Equality Act would mandate that “existing Federal statutes prohibiting sex discrimination in employment” cover gender identity and sexual orientation, outlawing Catholic hiring practices.

“Any church or private school which refused to hire persons who engage in sodomy and other same-sex behaviors, or who support abortion, even though it violates church teaching, will be held to be in violation of the Act,” said Robert Marshall, writing for LifeSiteNews.

“Businesses run by Christians or those who believe in Natural law, who fail the implement the LGBTQ+/abortion agenda, will be fined, just as they would be for engaging in racial discrimination,” he continued, adding that churches may lose tax-exempt status if they reject Democrats’ dictates.

“[C]hurches which ordain male-only clergy would be compelled to change their policies under the Equality Act or lose their tax-exempt status,” he said.

A 2019 letter signed by three high-ranking Catholic bishops, as well as leaders of dozens of Catholic and Christian institutions, raised similar issues, stating that the Act would “subject private employers and others to expensive lawsuits if they fail to adhere to strict preferred pronoun policies.”

“This would affect not only small, family-owned businesses but also charities and other nonprofits that are organized with a specific mission,” it continues.

The Equality Act specifically neuters religious protections provided for in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993 and sponsored by both current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The limitations on RFRA would be the first since the pro-faith bill became law.

The Equality Act would force Christian doctors and hospitals to perform transgender mutilation surgeries, abortions

The act would redefine sex discrimination in federal civil rights law to include “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition,” codifying and expanding abortion protections, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pro-life committee has noted.

“The Equality Act would amend the Civil Rights Act to forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, but it would also fulfill the abortion industry’s long-fought desire to establish abortion as ‘health care’ officially and legally,” Kenneth Craycraft of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology recently wrote in First Things.

“It requires that access to ‘treatment’ for pregnancy must not be any different from access to any other kind of health care treatment for any other ‘physical condition.’ But this is all code language for implementation of a vigorous national policy of abortion on demand for any or no reason,” he added.

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMEN: Tell them to oppose the Equality Act! Click to contact your federal politicians, now.

The Equality Act also would criminalize all counselling out of step with LGBT ideology, under the guise of “non-discrimination” in health care. Studies show that reparative and conversion therapy have worked for countless ex-LGBT patients, while the vast majority of children with gender dysphoria come to accept their sex if shielded from a devastating “gender affirmation” protocol.

Like abortion, transgender surgeries and “gender transition” “therapy” nevertheless would be promoted against Christians’ conscience rights by the Equality Act’s reworking of federal health care law.

“Catholic hospitals in California and New Jersey have been sued for declining to perform hysterectomies on otherwise healthy women who want to become male. A third Catholic hospital in Washington settled out of court when the ACLU sued them for declining to perform a double mastectomy on a gender dysphoric sixteen-year-old girl,” the Heritage Foundation has said.

“These cases would multiply under the Equality Act,” Heritage continued.

The Equality Act would increase girls’ risk of sexual assault and eliminate women’s sports

“An individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity,” the Equality Act reads.

Gender-confused males’ access to female facilities runs a grave risk of sexual assault, as seen in Decatur, Georgia, when a male student assaulted a five-year-old girl thanks to “inclusive” school bathroom policies.

“Women and girls deserve access to private spaces when they visit their local gym or use the restroom while dining out, but [the Equality Act] would undermine legitimate privacy and safety concerns that women have about sharing sex-specific facilities with a biological man,” Christian leaders’ 2019 letter against the act warns.

The Equality Act also would cement gender-confused males’ dangerous, unfair inclusion on girls’ sports teams, which the nascent Biden administration already mandated last month. “Transgender” males retain a significant edge against female competitors, humiliate them with obscenely disproportionate victories, and have inflicted brutal injuries on opponents.

The Equality Act has been totally denounced by the U.S. Catholic bishops

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has repeatedly condemned the Equality Act and is currently running a Voter Voice campaign calling on all Catholics to push their representatives to reject the bill.

“The Equality Act, which is being voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives soon, in many ways does the opposite and needs to be opposed. Instead of respecting differences in beliefs about marriage and sexuality, the Equality Act would discriminate against people of faith,” a statement for the campaign reads.

In another statement on Tuesday, five chairmen of the USCCB again slammed the Equality Act, saying that it would “discriminate against people of faith” and violate “precious rights to life and conscience” with “an abortion mandate.”

The USCCB had denounced the Equality Act in a letter in 2019, citing the bill’s attempt to “impose sweeping new norms that negatively impact the unborn, health care, charitable services, schools, personal privacy, athletics, free speech, religious liberties, and parental rights.”

“The Act’s unsound definitions of ‘sex’ and ’gender identity’ would erase women’s distinct, hard-won recognition in federal laws. Its sex-based nondiscrimination terms would end women’s shelters and many single-sex schools,” the letter read.

The Equality Act nevertheless has the total support of “Catholic” Joe Biden

“The Equality Act provides long overdue federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity… codifying the courage and resilience of the LGBTQ+ movement into enduring law,” Joe Biden said in a statement last week.

“I urge Congress to swiftly pass this historic legislation,” he added, having promised to sign the Act during the first 100 days of his administration if elected president.

Biden has reinforced his commitment to the anti-Catholic Equality Act with his vice-presidential pick of Kamala Harris, an avowed supporter of the legislation and other extreme pro-abortion, pro-LGBT policies.

Both Harris and Xavier Becerra, the Biden nominee to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are well-known for their infamous persecution of pro-life activists during their respective tenures as Attorney General of California.

CONTACT YOUR SENATOR: Tell them to reject radical Xavier Becerra for HHS! Click to contact your Senator, now.

Biden’s backing of the radically anti-life, anti-family Equality Act supports most voters’ belief that the Democratic Party head is a “puppet of the radical left.” It also further puts the lie to his repeated assertion of being a “devout Catholic,” which Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the USCCB’s pro-life committee, recently corrected.

“The president should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic, and acknowledge that his view on abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching,” Abp. Naumann said in an interview earlier this month. “What he is doing now is usurping the role of the bishops and confusing people. He’s declaring that he’s Catholic, and is going to force people to support abortion through their tax dollars. The bishops need to correct him” for “acting contrary to the Catholic faith.