Pride Month brings renewed call for the anti-religious liberty Equality Act
June is officially recognized as Pride Month by the LGBT community, prompting Joe Biden and pretty much every Democrat — and several Republicans — to celebrate sexual deviancy by renewing their call for passage of the anti-religious liberty Equality Act.
In his annual Proclamation on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month, 2024, Biden celebrated the “extraordinary courage and contributions of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) community” and he recommitted his administration to “[doing] to support LGBTQI+ rights at home and around the world.”
Earlier during Pride Month, Biden spelled out some of the ways he would accomplish this task in his Executive Order Advancing Equality for LGBTQI+ Individuals where he provided a bucket list of his priorities concerning the advancement of the LGBT agenda, including a renewed call for Congress to pass the Equality Act — a piece of legislation that will destroy religious liberty:
President Biden believes that no one should face discrimination because of who they are or whom they love. Since President Biden took office, he has championed the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans and people around the world, accelerating the march towards full equality.
As President Biden said during his first joint address to Congress, the President has the back of LGBTQI+ people across the country. That is why he is taking these bold actions and continuing to fight for full equality for every American – including urging Congress pass the Equality Act and provide overdue civil rights protections for LGBTQI+ people.
Today, to mark Pride Month, President Biden will sign an Executive Order Advancing Equality for LGBTQI+ Individuals, and he will welcome LGBTQI+ families, advocates, elected officials, and leaders to the White House for a reception. (Emphasis mine)
LGBT extremists like to make the Equality Act about “the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans,” but the simple reality is that it is perhaps the most anti-religious liberty piece of legislation ever to come down the pike.
The Equality Act is a proposal to extend federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans by amending the Civil Rights Act to include the entirety of the pro-LGBT agenda. Specifically, the measure would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, economic status, sex and national origin, and expand it to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.
According to Democrat Rep. Mark Takano of California — one of 12 openly LGBT lawmakers in Congress and primary sponsor of the 2023 edition of the Equality Act — the bill is designed to silence anyone who objects to the LGBT agenda. “We are filing this bill during Pride Month, a time of celebration but also an opportunity to reflect on a time when being out was nearly impossible,” Takano said during a news conference at the time. “We cannot allow extremists in our country to once again normalize homophobia and attacks on LGBTQ people.” (Emphasis mine)
Under the Equality Act, everyone will be required to submit to the LGBT agenda, with churches and religious employers, organizations, and colleges afforded no exceptions whatsoever. “Religion is no excuse for discrimination when it comes to sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) when explaining the intention of the legislation.
Besides the clear and obvious threat to genuine civil rights and civil liberty, the Equality Act is loaded with a myriad of unintended consequences so egregious that even voices within the pro-LGBT community oppose it for reasons other than 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. (Emphasis mine)
The Equality Act has been a priority of pro-LGBT forces in Congress for many years, and momentum has shifted in favor of passage.
The House of Representatives first introduced the Equality Act (H.R. 5) in March 2019. The bill, which codifies the LGBT agenda, passed in the House in May 2019 but stalled in the Senate. Shortly after the 2020 election, the Equality Act was reintroduced in February 2021. Once again, it passed in the House but went nowhere in the Senate.
In June 2020, the Supreme Court, led by Neil Gorsuch, took the first steps in favor of the Equality Act when he joined the majority in a 6-3 decision (Bostock v. Clayton County) to create a never-existed-before inalienable right to transgenderism in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that provided no protections for religious liberty.
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 was “essential to ensuring that no future president can ever again roll back civil rights and protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. It’s wrong to deny people access to services or housing because of who they are or who they love.”
Although Democrats have been the driving force behind these developments, the Equality Act was first introduced in 2019 when Republicans could have stopped it but didn’t, just as I warned would happen. In fact, Republicans supported the goals of the Equality Act, which is why they introduced a “conservative alternative” called the Fairness for All Act in December 2019.
For those who claim this wouldn’t have happened if Trump had won in 2020, let me remind you that he is no different that Biden when it comes to the LGBT agenda. Trump openly supported it as a candidate in 2016 and he continued doing so as president.
In a December 2019 interview with The Washington Blade, then-White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere expressed Trump’s support for the GOP’s Fairness for All Act and his desire see it become law:
“President Trump has protected human dignity, fought for inclusion, promoted LGBTQ Americans, and strongly protected religious freedom for everyone while in office. The White House looks forward to reviewing the legislation.”
In February 2019, Trump started his own global effort to spread the LGBT agenda and normalize sexual deviancy worldwide. Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly homosexual person in the Trump administration, led the effort and defended LGBT deviancy as “God’s truth” in an editorial written for Bild, a German tabloid newspaper:
“While a student at Evangel University, a Christian liberal arts college in Missouri, I was taught by biblical scholars that all truth is God’s truth, no matter where it is found. The truth for LGBT people is that we were born gay.”
The evolution from ignoring things done “between two consenting adults in private” to government-enforced, mandatory acceptance of all forms of sexual deviancy is why we have Pride Month and the push for the anti-religious liberty Equality Act.
And it’s also why we need a revival of Christian constitutional conservatism.
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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