WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. House
of Representatives is scheduled to vote Thursday on H.R. 5,
deceptively titled "The Equality Act." When it was introduced last
week, the bill had 223 Democratic co-sponsors and no Republican
co-sponsors. Several Republicans who cosponsored the bill in
2019 have declined to cosponsor this year's reintroduction of the
bill. Family Research Council released a new issue brief
today, "How the 'Equality Act' Is Actually Unequal, Unfair, and
Unjust."
Family Research Council President Tony
Perkins made the following comments:
"The Equality Act is a grave and treasonous threat to our
nation's core values contained in our First Amendment. The fact
that no Republicans have co-sponsored it, even those who
co-sponsored in the previous Congress, underscores the Democrats'
lurch to the Left. This is a radical bill that uses the
government to control, through coercion, how every American thinks,
speaks, and acts on issues of human sexuality. It may be named the
Equality Act, but as the details make quite clear, the only equal
thing about it is how much damage it does to many facets of
American life.
"It is an attack on parental rights and women's sports, but to
the millions of people of faith in this country, it is an egregious
attack on the freedom to believe and live according to those
beliefs. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act will be committed to
the 'memory hole,' and we will then experience a devastating loss
of religious freedom in America, and that will have consequences
for all Americans.
"Activists in high-office, whom President Biden is working to
appoint, could use the Act to punish faith-based organizations of
any type—places of worship, schools, small businesses, adoption
agencies, pregnancy centers, and other non-profit charities—that
decline to surrender their beliefs on the family, sexuality, and
even abortion.
"The Equality Act is a Trojan horse for radical Leftists, whose
goal is to invade every square inch of America, even the homes of
those who hold different beliefs, with the force of law. It will
effectively cancel people of faith from civil society. We
urge every Member of Congress to oppose the Equality Act.
"This bill is rotten to its core, and its ideas cannot be
salvaged by dressing them up into the 'Fairness for All' proposal –
which contains almost all the same harmful provisions as the
Equality Act, only with less extreme language and measures.
No Republican can claim to protect faith, family, and freedom and
also support the so-called 'Fairness for All' bill," concluded
Perkins.
Mary Beth Waddell, Director of
Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty at FRC, and who
authored our issue brief on the bill, stated:
"In addition to obliterating the rights, privacy, and safety of
women and girls, this extreme bill would politicize the medical
profession, forcing doctors who provide legitimate hormone
treatments and surgical procedures to offer those treatments
against their conscience. It would put the threat of litigation
over every medical professional who would dare to stand up for the
science that indicates the harms of these treatments and surgeries,
likely causing many to stay silent. The misnamed 'Equality Act' has
no place in any just, fair, and tolerant society."
To read more on the Equality Act, visit:
www.frc.org/equalityact.
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SOURCE Family Research Council