Joe Biden is reversing an existing transgender healthcare rule in what can be chalked up as another victory in the LGBT culture war being waged against America and morality. In what the Department of Health and Human Services is calling an effort to prevent “discrimination” against transgender people in healthcare practices, Biden’s new rule will no longer define “sex” as biological.
Biden has always been a proponent of the radical LGBT agenda.
Less than a week ago, Biden announced his intention to begin taking states to court over so-called “anti-transgender” laws. This threat followed his recent address to the joint session of Congress, in which he instructed Congress to protect his LGBT agenda by passing the Equality Act, a pro-LGBT/anti-religious liberty bill that passed the House in 2019 and again in 2021.
The Equality Act (H.R. 5) codifies the LGBT agenda by revising the Civil Rights Act, and will require complete submission to the LGBT agenda, with no exceptions whatsoever granted to churches and religious employers, organizations, and colleges. In the words of Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) when explaining the intention of the legislation in 2019, “Religion is no excuse for discrimination when it comes to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
In October 2020, then-candidate for president Joe Biden said in an interview with Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal that passing the Equality Act is “essential to ensuring that no future president can ever again roll back civil rights and protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.”
He promised at the time to have his Cabinet enforce the Equality Act across federal agencies. “Too many states do not have laws that explicitly protect LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination,” Biden said in the interview. “It’s wrong to deny people access to services or housing because of who they are or who they love.” (emphasis mine)
Biden immediately made his intention on the matter crystal clear only hours after taking the oath of office when he issued an executive order barring discrimination based on “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”
Biden’s LGBT agenda aside, he’s been emboldened by Donald Trump’s “conservative” Supreme Court.
Motivated by last year’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County — the majority opinion creating a never-existed-before inalienable right to transgenderism — Biden’s Department of Justice Division of Civil Rights took the first steps in the direction of taking states to court when it determined that anti-discrimination policies enshrined under Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972 provide legal protection for gay and transgender students.
The majority opinion was written by none other than Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch
In Bostock, the court determined that the prohibition on discriminating against individuals because of “sex” also extended to sexual orientation and transgender status was prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After noting how the court often looks to interpretations of Title VII to “inform” interpretations of Title IX, the Biden administration said it was following the same logic in applying anti-discrimination measures to schools that receive federal funding.
“After considering the text of Title IX, Supreme Court caselaw, and developing jurisprudence in this area, the Division has determined that the best reading of Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ is that it includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
The Bostock v. Clayton County is also the motivation behind Biden’s new transgender healthcare rule.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that people have a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex and receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation (SOGI). That’s why today HHS announced it will act on related reports of discrimination,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement announcing the change.
For now, Biden’s transgender healthcare rule change allows exemptions for religiously-affiliated organizations to survive, in adherence to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and subsequent court rulings. This means that the enforcement arm of HHS (Office of Civil Rights) won’t try to strong arm hospitals and healthcare providers with religious objections to participate in transgender “transition” interventions.
However, let’s not forget the Equality Act. This pro-LGBT/anti-religious liberty legislation is pending in the Senate, but if it becomes law, it will eliminate constitutional and RFRA protection for religious objections on matters of gender identity, sexual orientation, and abortion. Joe Biden has promised to sign the bill if it reaches his desk
In addition to being a clear and present danger to genuine civil rights and civil liberty, the Equality Act is loaded with unintended consequences so egregious that even voices within the pro-LGBT community oppose it for reasons outside of religious liberty. “It would eliminate women and girls as a coherent legal category worthy of civil rights protection,” said Julia Beck, a self-described radical lesbian feminist and the former law and policy co-chair for Baltimore’s LGBTQ Commission.
I’ve mentioned this before, but Republicans support the concept of the Equality Act. When it was introduced in 2019, Republicans were still in a position to stop it but didn’t, just as I warned would happen. Not only did they fail to at least try to stop it, House Republicans introduced a “conservative alternative” bill called the Fairness For All Act in December 2019.
The Fairness For All Act would have outlawed anti-transgender laws by amending the Civil Rights Act using the same pro-LGBT language included in the Equality Act but with additional language that allegedly protects the convictions of religious organizations, healthcare providers, and employers with 15 employees or less.
The evolution from ignoring things done “between two consenting adults in private” to government-enforced, mandatory acceptance of sexual deviancy has been occurring for decades, and the casualties left in the rubble of this persistent march toward Sodom have continued to pile up.
The LGBT culture war marches on, destroying the religious liberty rights of Americans — just as we knew would be the case following the Obergefell decision — leaving Christians, conservatives, and constitutionalists as the casualties.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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