Joe Biden has always been a proponent of the radical LGBT agenda, and despite claims to the contrary, recent actions in this area by his administration are a direct threat to religious liberty.
Two months ago, Biden and his Department of Health and Human Services reversed an LGBT healthcare rule in an effort to prevent “discrimination” against transgender people in healthcare practices by no longer defining “sex” as biological.
Prior to this rule change, Biden announced his intention to begin taking states to court over so-called “anti-transgender” laws. Just prior to making his threat to sue the states, Biden gave his first address to the joint session of Congress where he instructed members of the House and the Senate to endorse his actions in support of the radical LGBT agenda by passing the Equality Act, a pro-LGBT/anti-religious liberty piece of legislation that passed the House in 2019 and again in 2021.
For the uninitiated, the Equality Act (H.R. 5) revises the Civil Rights Act, and will require complete submission to the codifies the radical 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, “Religion is no excuse for discrimination when it comes to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Then-candidate for president Joe Biden said in an October 2020 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)
Mere hours after taking the oath of office, Biden immediately took his first steps in the direction of the radical LGBT agenda when he issued an executive order barring discrimination based on “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”
A few weeks ago, Biden and his radical LGBT agenda went after public and private schools via the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Education when he announced plans to expand the definition of the federal civil-rights statute banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs to include gender identity.
In response to these latest actions, a coalition of 21 state attorneys general warned Biden in a letter that his recently enacted radical LGBT agenda policies concerning sexual orientation and gender identity are a direct threat to constitutionally protected religious liberty and free speech rights (via ChristianHeadlines.com):
The coalition sent a letter to President Biden dated July 7 asserting that two recent actions by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Education “threaten to impose unlawful regulatory guidance upon nearly every employer and educational facility in our states and throughout the country.”
The Biden administration’s actions, the attorneys general say, exceed what is required under the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision. In that 2020 decision, the justices ruled that federal law prohibits discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The EEOC recently released a guidance document explaining how it interprets Bostock, while the Department of Education issued a Notice of Interpretation explaining how it will enforce its interpretation of Bostock.
The attorneys general letter charges that the EEOC guidance “appears to ignore” two of three “protections provided to religious employers.” Those two are Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which has “express statutory exception for religious organizations” and the First Amendment’s protections of “the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers,” the letter says.
The Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling, the letter says, is “a statutory decision and cannot overrule the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty.”
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County — the majority opinion was written by none other than Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch — created a never-existed-before inalienable right to transgenderism.
In the case, 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. Since the court often uses interpretations of Title VII to “inform” interpretations of Title IX, Biden is using the Bostock ruling to spread the radical LGBT agenda in schools.
“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.”
Bostock was also the rationale 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.
The attorneys general letter also points out how Biden’s support of the radical LGBT agenda violates other parts of the First Amendment — such as Freedom of Speech:
The letter asserts the EEOC infringes on free speech by placing restrictions on pronouns. A Q&A on the EEOC website says that “use of pronouns or names that are inconsistent with an individual’s gender identity” can be “considered harassment” in “certain circumstances.”
“To be unlawful,” the EEOC says, “the conduct must be severe or pervasive when considered together with all other unwelcome conduct based on the individual’s sex including gender identity, thereby creating a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or offensive.”
The attorneys general say the EEOC policy is an overreach.
For now, Biden’s radical LGBT agenda allows exemptions for religiously-affiliated organizations in adherence to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and subsequent court rulings. However, the pro-LGBT/anti-religious liberty Equality Act, if it becomes law, eliminates constitutional and RFRA protection for religious objections on matters of gender identity, sexual orientation, and abortion.
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, Republicans in the House 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 radical LGBT agenda marches on, destroying religious liberty along the way — 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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