The Equality Act and the Looming Tyranny of the Self – Part 2

An earlier article reviewed the basic features of the proposed Equality Act (H.R. 5), which would incorporate sexual orientation and gender identity into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, expand the social services that count as “public accommodations,” and cover in particular religious social services and perhaps even churches and other houses of worship. This article will review more specific consequences.

Although the bill is about sexual behavior and gender identity, and denies liberty of conscience against desired sexual behavior and gender identity, it also extends the same absolute denial of conscience and reason to abortion. It does this by euphemistically referring to abortion as a “condition related to pregnancy,” which several federal courts have ruled is terminology that includes abortion. Thus, medical professionals, doctors, nurses, and medical institutions – including religious medical institutions – would be legally required to perform abortions. The Hobby Lobby decision, which protects the religious liberty of closely held for-profit corporations, based as it is on RFRA, would be nullified in any case related to sex or abortion, and the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious non-profits would be liable to supply goods and services against their consciences. All medical plans would be legally required to provide benefits for abortion, for the same reason.

Additionally, the act would reasonably undo the pro-life Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from funding abortions, since the government also cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, and “pregnancy, childbirth, and any related medical condition” is defined as “sex.” State governments, as well, would be compelled to fund abortion, also being bound by federal law.

The truly destructive and irrational aspect of the Equality Act is that it puts self-definition in charge of the regime it mandates, and from this there can be no dissent for any reason, religious or rationalistic. In order to overcome religious and pre-modern precepts against sexual license – which are not radically different between major religions – and the very rational considerations of protecting unborn children and the procreative purpose of sex which agree with traditional precepts, the immediate sexual desires of individuals are put in charge. So it is “discrimination” not to kill an unborn child if that is what the mother wants, or to decline complicity in homosexuality or an individual’s irrational belief that he or she belongs to the opposite sex, or some self-defined “gender.”

But in a sense, this is only self-definition to a point. It is the community of psychologists and psychiatrists, whose job it is to analyze abnormal and distressed individuals with the doctrines of secular psychology, the wider secular academy, and the entertainment industry and social media that reflect on and disseminate their ideas that give children and young people the framework in which to (falsely) invent themselves. As has been observed, the notion of a “transgender child” would have been inconceivable thirty years ago. But there is nothing scientific about one’s determination that one is “homosexual” (itself a construct advanced in the nineteenth century) or “transgender.” They are simply terms put forward in the secularized West in place of Biblical terms (“homosexual” instead of “sodomite”) or Biblical condemnations (e.g., identification with the opposite sex (Deut. 22:5)).

Because gender identity is included in the law, medical professionals will be legally required to perform sexual anatomy altering surgery, or to administer opposite sex hormones. And as recent experience has shown, this would be true of minor children as well as adults. It would not matter if the medical provider’s best medical judgment was that this would result in loss of fertility, irreplaceable sexual parts, and can lead to other physical problems (loss of bone density and heart problems). All that would matter is that the patient’s “gender identity” (at least at that particular moment in time) is affirmed.

It is here that we see one of the most savage manifestations (not to detract at all from the savagery of abortion) of moral autonomy, namely, the “sex transitioning” of children, which involves the administration of puberty blocking drugs, and later youthful castrations, mastectomies, and sexual mutilation. Performing, facilitating or referring “patients” for this will be legally required of medical professionals, for the same reason that abortion will be legally required. To do anything else is “discrimination.” Performing sexual anatomy alteration on adults is also wrong, as it defaces the normal human body (which Christians understand is part of the image of God). There is also the issue of “sex change regret,” which cannot be rectified by restoring healthy and natural body parts that have been destroyed.

Some idea of the insanity that the Equality Act will mandate was provided by the Obama Administration’s “transgender mandate” in 2016. Issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, this required doctors to perform sex “transitioning” procedures referred by a mental health professional, even on children and even against their best medical judgment. As noted in the linked article, “fewer than 1-in-4 children referred for gender dysphoria continued to experience that condition into adulthood.” Yet in the face of this fact, the government mandated procedures leading to the destruction of natural sexual anatomy which cannot be reversed, nor fertility regained, and as already noted, with developing children and young people, loss of bone density in males from hormonal treatments and permanently lowered voice and facial hair with females, along with other general changes in physique which will permanently impact an individual into adulthood.

Virtually all medical plans were required to cover such “transitioning,” except Medicare and Medicaid, because the government’s own panel of medical experts concluded that sex transitioning can be harmful. Medicare and Medicaid therefore do not require sex transitioning for any patient, maintaining that it can result in harm to the patient. Among the problems identified are increased risk of cancer, exacerbated effects of aging, diabetes, hypertension, and (for young Medicaid patients) bone development and height. The military’s medical policy, TRICARE, also does not require doctors to perform sex transitioning or any “care that he or she feels unprepared to provide.”

Another aspect of the bill that is not going to be highlighted – but at this point likely will not be denied by its proponents – is the impact that denying the the reality of sex will have on parental rights, foster care, and adoption agencies. The Heritage Foundation’s review of the numerous problems with the law pointed out that parents will be liable to be accused of abuse if they object to their child’s belief that he or she does not belong to his or her biological sex. Further, foster care and adoption services will be reduced by eliminating those services that cannot in good conscience supply children to persons who are in relationships other than natural, male/female marriage.

The philosophy behind the act, and its specifically anti-Christian aspect, will be reviewed in a subsequent article.

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