Recent Executive Order and upcoming “Equality Act” part of new wave of bizarre “rights.”
Undefined radical terms being put into law!
By Amy Contrada
January 28, 2021
[Republished from American Thinker with some additions and changes.]
On the afternoon of January 20, Biden issued an Executive Order demanding “equal treatment under the law, no matter [one’s] gender identity or sexual orientation.” This is just the first salvo in the next wave pushing “LGBT rights.” The order will soon be backed by federal law, via the pending LGBT “Equality Act.”
While many are now warning the order will destroy girls’ and women’s sports, the order’s impact is much broader.
The enforcers will be handed free rein to transform society in unimaginable ways,given the undefined terms in the order and pending law: gender identity, sexual orientation, LGBT. Why has there been no pushback on embedding these sexual-radical concepts in our legal system?
Establishment conservatives have shied away from addressing this issue and denigrate anyone who dares to confront it. They don’t want to be called “anti-gay” or “uncompassionate” towards the “gender confused.” (In 2018, MassResistance was banned from CPAC for our outspoken opposition to the transgender movement. See more here and here.)
Yet now, conservative commentators complain about boys taking over girls’ sports and locker rooms. Too little, too late.
Biden’s LGBT Executive Order
Biden’s Executive Order (EO) targets “discrimination” based on “gender identity and sexual orientation.” Anywhere existing statutes or regulations prohibit “sex discrimination,” the EO instructs all federal agencies to review and revise regulations as necessary to include “gender identity and sexual orientation.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s absurd ruling in Bostock , which radically re-defined Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as official Civil Rights protections, is cited as one basis for this EO. The woke EO even references the radicals’ idea about “overlapping areas of discrimination,” called “intersectionality,” that deserve special notice.
As we often see from the Left, the EO’s introductory paragraph is emotionally manipulative, mentioning respect, dignity, love, children, one’s true self, and people just wanting “a roof over their head”:
Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love. Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.
But nowhere does the EO define the new terms at issue.
LGBT “Equality Act”
As of this writing, the so-called Equality Act has not yet been filed in the new 117th Congress. But you can see last session’s Equality Act bill here.
The Equality Act’s stated goal is “to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes.” (What are the “other purposes”?) The bill employs the phrase “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (referred to as ‘LGBTQ’).” That’s as close to a definition it gets.
Anywhere discrimination on the basis of sex appears in the law, the new terms gender identity, and sexual orientation will be added. That includes laws on public accommodations, employment, housing, credit, education, federally funded programs, jury service, and child welfare programs.
One foreboding clause states:
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993… shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.
So, destroying religious freedom on these issues is one of the “other purposes” of the Equality Act.
No Definitions
What exactly will be protected under the terms “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” in Biden’s EO and the Equality Act? No actual definitions are given. So we must look elsewhere for hints.
“Gender Identity”
The whole idea of “gender” is recent – and irrational. It’s basically an evolving theoretical construct disseminated by sexual radical academics, political activists, and allies in the medical establishment. But what we’ve seen play out so far under cover of “transgender rights” reveals it as pure lunacy.
Massachusetts law includes a silly circular definition of “gender identity.” The relevant section states:
”Gender identity” shall mean a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth. Gender-related identity may be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity…
In a ridiculous attempt to explain it, The Massachusetts Attorney General writes, “In essence, gender identity is a person’s internal sense of their own gender.” So “gender” is just what an individual thinks about himself, unconnected to the reality around him. But we all must “respect” his delusion. We are also presented with the absurd phrase, “sex assigned at birth,” which negates the scientific reality of the distinction between biological male and female.
The far-left Human Rights Campaign has an equally absurd definition:
Gender identity: One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One’s gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.
Already, we’ve seen this nonsense allow for glaring abuses in language, schools, sports, public accommodations, healthcare, insurance, and businesses. It has led to children being confused and indoctrinated; some are having their bodies destroyed and sterilized by puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical mutilations.
Lacking any rational legal definition, who can imagine what further demands will be justified under the “gender identity” umbrella?
“Sexual Orientation”
What exactly is “sexual orientation”? Massachusetts law includes a disturbing hint of what could come our way, among other things, if Biden’s EO and the Equality Act law are enforced: legalized pedophilia.
Where Massachusetts law mentions “sexual orientation” (as protected from discrimination), the term is immediately followed by the phrase, “which shall not include persons whose sexual orientation involves minor children as the sex object.” Clearly, pedophilia can be considered a sexual orientation.
But the EO and Equality Act do not limit “sexual orientation” in this way. Nor do they exclude other reprehensible and dangerous practices which could be considered sexual orientations such as BDSM, polygamy, prostitution, bestiality, pornography addiction.
The radical homosexual advocacy group Human Rights Campaign defines sexual orientation as, “An inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people” – also without any limitation on who those “other people” might be. That syrupy reference to emotion and romance helps cover over the dangerous promiscuity common to many in the “LGBT community.” And HRC repeats the false claim that sexual orientation is “inherent or immutable.”
“LGBTQ+”
The Equality Act uses the acronym LGBTQ [no +] without defining it. We’ve been told that LGBT stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender.” The meaning of the long-standing words “lesbian” and “gay” are obvious – but what exactly are “bisexual,” “transgender,” and “queer” (Q)?
Here is how the Human Rights Campaign defines the Q for “queer”:
Queer: A term people often use to express a spectrum of identities and orientations that are counter to the mainstream. Queer is often used as a catch-all to include many people, including those who do not identify as exclusively straight and/or folks who have non-binary or gender-expansive identities.
In a recent interview with Philadelphia Gay News (Oct. 2020), Biden went even further and added + (a plus sign) to the LGBTQ acronym. He promised the moon to the “LGBTQ+” community and said he would guarantee transgender housing. He said, “It’s about dignity, plain and simple.” But what does that + (plus sign) mean?
Orwellian “Newspeak”
The ruling elite wants free rein to keep expanding their reach without limit of legal definitions. That’s what the + means!
What we’re experiencing is the perversion of language for use as a political weapon. Orwell explained this in “The Principles of Newspeak”:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the [ruling regime], but to make all other modes of thought impossible….
This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings…. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought…
New words and phrases invented by the Left:
sexual orientation – gay – gay marriage – bisexual – gender – gender identity – transgender – [pronouns] zie, zir, they, them – queer – LGBTQ+ – questioning – pansexual – nonbinary – genderqueer – sex assigned at birth – who they are – hate speech – hate crime – love is love – social justice
Undesirable words and phrases the Left is attempting to eliminate:
God – faith – Bible – truth – free speech – freedom of the press – Constitution -Founding Fathers – abortion – morality – perversion – modesty – sodomy – mother – father – son – daughter – parental rights
Words and phrases that are being stripped of unorthodox (unapproved) meanings:
sex – man – woman – boy – girl – marriage – family – human rights – justice – discrimination – hate – equality
It’s been going on for decades now. But we must demand that our political leaders call out the illegitimacy of embedding undefined radical terms in our laws. And we must continue to make that clear, too!
As we pointed out above, we can’t simply wait until a new transgender edict begins to destroy girls’ and women’s sports. The deeper roots of that agenda need to be confronted now. Are conservatives up for that? More to the point: Do we have a choice?
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Amy Contrada is with MassResistance. Early in the transgender rights onslaught (2008), she published a groundbreaking analysis of the Massachusetts transgender rights bill.
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