Posted on 03/17/2021 9:56:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
Protecting children from confusion or from harmful experimental 'treatments' is neither abuse nor neglect, but under the Equality Act, it would be treated as such.
Consider the following scenario, rooted in the actual experiences of some parents.
Your 14-year-old daughter, who has never before questioned her gender identity, comes home from school one day declaring herself to be a boy after hearing a transgender teenager speak at a school assembly. She persists in her claims and demands cross-sex hormones, even though her experiments with a transgender identity seem more about winning peer approval in school and on social media than about any deep-seated discomfort with being female.
Scenarios like this, which were unheard of a decade ago, are now increasingly common, particularly among adolescent girls. Abigail Shrier documents this in her disturbing new book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”
You take a cautious approach. You delay allowing your daughter to begin taking powerful hormones or undergo surgeries that will irreversibly masculinize her appearance and eventually render her sterile. You also seek a therapist who won’t unquestioningly affirm her transgender identity, but will probe more deeply to see if underlying psychological or social issues might be the real cause of your daughter’s transgender identification (psychiatric comorbidities are high among those with gender dysphoria).
Enter the so-called Equality Act, or its so-called “compromise” bill, the Fairness for All Act. Both would imperil your right to protect your daughter from risky and unproven gender reassignment “treatments.” They would also make it even more difficult than it already is for all parents to prevent their children from falling prey to gender ideology.
Advocates of the Equality Act want you to think of it as a basic civil rights measure necessary to protect people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender from unjust discrimination. What it actually does is impose a radical ideology with sweeping implications on all Americans, including making it a form of unlawful discrimination to act on the belief – based on actual science – that maleness and femaleness are determined by biology rather than feelings, even in the way you raise your own children.
The Fairness for All Act is no better. The only significant difference is that, unlike the Equality Act, which explicitly exempts itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Fairness for All carves out limited and insufficient religious exemptions. But it still elevates “sexual orientation and gender identity” to protected classes in the Civil Rights Act, defining adherence to biology (and to traditional understandings of marriage and sexuality) as bigotry, akin to the racist belief that blacks are inferior to whites.
Religious exemptions won’t do anything to help those whose objections are based on common sense, science or medical evidence rather than religion. And once the idea that objections to same-sex marriage or gender ideology are akin to racism becomes enshrined in law, religious freedom exemptions will offer extremely limited and short-lived protection.
Returning to our not-so-hypothetical case, if the Equality Act or the Fairness for All Act becomes law, you would not only find it difficult to protect your daughter from the irreversible harms of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, but your failure to unquestioningly affirm your daughter’s new identity and your refusal to consent to hormone treatment for her could be considered abusive or neglectful.
You would also have a hard time finding a therapist who supports your cautious approach because both of these bills would likely make it illegal for therapists to question a client’s transgender identification. Such an approach could be considered “conversion therapy,” which the activist group GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) defines as “any attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” Both bills outlaw “conversion therapy” as a form of discrimination.
If, despite your best attempts to be understanding and empathetic, your daughter calls a hotline or complains to her school guidance counselor, saying that your lack of unqualified support for her new identity makes her feel “unsafe” or causes her psychological distress, you might be investigated by state child-protection officials.
Your daughter could be removed from your custody, and a judge could rule that your daughter can begin receiving testosterone without your consent – even though such treatments are experimental (as the U.K. High Court has recognized), with no proven long-term benefits and many known harms; and despite growing evidence that, particularly for adolescent girls, gender dysphoria is spreading via social contagion among peer groups in person and online.
This is not just hypothetical. In 2019 a loving and supportive father lost custody of his 14-year-old daughter because he did not want her to begin taking hormones to transition to a male gender identity until she was older. His daughter, who had previously not questioned her gender identity, started identifying as a boy after being released for the third time from a psychiatric hospital to which she was admitted for self-harm.
He accepted her transgender identity, agreeing to use her preferred name and pronouns, but did not believe she was mature enough to decide to undergo medical treatments that would permanently alter her body. Similarly, in 2018, Ohio parents lost custody of their 17-year-old daughter for refusing to consent to transgender hormone injections.
The Equality Act (and Fairness for All Act) will make such tragic cases much more common, by codifying the ideology underlying these decisions into federal anti-discrimination law. It will also make it even more difficult for parents to shield their children from confusing and harmful ideological indoctrination in public schools, like curricula that encourage children to question their gender identity and teach there are no “male bodies” or “female bodies,” but only “bodies with penises and testicles” or “bodies with vulva and ovaries.”
If either of these bills becomes law, all public schools and any private school that receives federal funds must adopt this unscientific newspeak. A host of other “gender-inclusive” policies will be forced on students, such as giving access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletic participation on the basis of gender identification. Schools will be forced to facilitate a child’s gender transition while hiding this from parents (as many school districts already do.)
Of course, all people should be treated with respect, and no one should be subject to unjust discrimination. But affirming biological reality is neither bigotry nor discrimination. And protecting children from confusion or from harmful experimental “treatments” is neither abuse nor neglect.
On the contrary, it is a fundamental right and duty of parents that the state has an obligation to respect. These are views held by millions of Americans across the political spectrum.
Adopting the Equality Act or Fairness for All Act will not be a victory for civil rights. It will be the imposition of a contested and dangerous ideology on all Americans, and your children may be among the casualties.
So, if they put you in jail for not using the pronouns that your child insists on, are you still required to pay for the sex “change” operation?
This is the end of parental authority. The State has removed it, but left parents with the financial responsibility.
You will have no family, you will have no friendships, yoou will never hold power or have control over your destiny, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.
This started with abortion. It has been a gradual downhill slide since the 70s. It’s now fast tracked on the elevator to hell thanks to public schools.
Equality Act, or ...The State Own Your Children Act.
And people wonder why birth rates are plummeting. This is an unintended consequence.
Although I agree with the overall point of the article, I disagree with this two-part statement. First, not all people should be treated with respect. Respect must be earned. Second, although the author uses the qualifier "unjust" discrimination, in fact discrimination is a survival mechanism all species, including humans, do naturally and intuitively. I am proud to discriminate against those who would harm me and my loved ones.
Well, if you want to depopulate a country that is probably even more effective than the ‘one child’ policy.
If I walk into my doctor’s office today and say, “Hi, I’m Margaret Thatcher,” my physician will say I am delusional and give me an anti-psychotic. Yet, if instead, I walked in and said, “I’m a man,” he would say, “Congratulations, you’re transgender.”If I were to say, “Doc, I am suicidal because I’m an amputee trapped in a normal body, please cut off my leg,” I will be diagnosed with body identity integrity disorder. But if I walk into that doctor’s office and say, “I am a man, sign me up for a double mastectomy,” my physician will. See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.
No one is born transgender. If gender identity were hardwired in the brain before birth, identical twins would have the same gender identity 100 percent of the time. But they don’t.
- The Dangers of a Transgender Ideology
For your end times ping list
There’s a bible verse about how God will allow a strong spirit of delusion to be visited upon the nation’s.
I agree completely. May I add, based on my discrimination I ridicule, abuse and take actions to protect my family. All my life I have clearly stated the reasons so my children know why.
Anyone interfering in my children’s sexuality will have me alter their appearance from human body to Swiss cheese.
[[This started with abortion. It has been a gradual downhill slide since the 70s.]
The right warned that it was a “slippery Slope” and the left mocked them claiming they were being overly dramatic. Yet here we are- families being destroyed by the state- parental rights being negated- just as the right predicted-
The states have never expressly constitutionally given the unconstitutionally big federal government the specific power to address sex-related discrimination outside the scope of voting rights issues, evidenced by the 19th Amendment.
"19th Amendment:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation [emphasis added]."
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
State government “leaders” who turn their heads to federal government overreach of its constitutionally limited powers need to be primaried in 2022.
ok- so in an “Equality Act” Everyone is equal- so that means that my religious beliefs are just as ‘equal’ as someone’s irreligious beliefs- so i guess that leaves us at a standstill. So if a child says they wanna be another gender- the parent can say “Nope” because their opinions are just as valid as their child’s
IF however, the courts step in and grant the child the ‘right’ to transgender against their parent’s wishes, then that puts the child’s ‘rights’ (and the agenda driven desires of the left) above that of the parent, and it’s no longer equal footing for everyone-
Either Equality means equality- or it doesn’t-
It almost seems like they've been lying to us.
The be a “bigot” who opposes transgenderism.
Better to be actively hated by the Woke and the Left than to be even tolerated by them.
*** This started with abortion. It has been a gradual downhill slide since the 70s. ***
I’d say it started way before that. The fundamental problem here is governments pretending things to be true that aren’t true. Here are some examples:
- The Salem witch hunts pretended witches were real.
- American slavery pretended that black people weren’t
fully human.
- The Holocaust pretended that Jewish people weren’t fully human.
- Abortion pretends that preborn people aren’t fully human.
- And now governments pretend that homosexuality is normal.
Here are excerpts from the text from the bill, HR 5:
(b) PURPOSE. — It is the purpose of this Act to expand as well as clarify, confirm and create greater consistency in the protections and remedies against discrimination on the basis of all covered characteristics and to provide guidance and notice to individuals, organizations, corporations, and agencies regarding their obligations under the law.
SEC. 3. PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS.
(a) PROHIBITION ON DISCRIMINATION OR SEGREGATION IN PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS.—Section 201 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000a) is amended—
(1) in subsection (a), by inserting ‘‘sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity),’’ before ‘‘or national origin’’; and
(2) in subsection (b)—
(A) in paragraph (3), by striking ‘‘stadium’’ and all that follows and inserting ‘‘stadium or other place of or establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, public gathering, or public display;’’;
(B) by redesignating paragraph (4) as paragraph (6); and
(C) by inserting after paragraph (3) the following:
‘‘(4) any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services;
‘‘(5) any train service, bus service, car service, taxi service, airline service, station, depot, or other place of or establishment that provides transportation service; and’’.
(b) UNLAWFUL EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES.—Section 703 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000e– 5 2) is amended—
(1) in the section header, by striking ‘‘SEX,’’ and inserting ‘‘SEX (INCLUDING SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER IDENTITY),’’;
‘‘SEC. 1101. DEFINITIONS AND RULES.
‘‘(a) DEFINITIONS.—In titles II, III, IV, VI, VII, and 22 IX (referred to individually in sections 1106 and 1107 as a ‘covered title’):
‘‘(1) RACE; COLOR; RELIGION; SEX; SEXUAL ORIENTATION; GENDER IDENTITY; NATIONAL ORIGIN.—The term ‘race’, ‘color’, ‘religion’, ‘sex’ (including ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’), or ‘national origin’, used with respect to an individual, includes—
‘‘(A) the race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), or national origin, respectively, of another person with whom the individual is associated or has been associated; and
‘‘(B) a perception or belief, even if inaccurate, concerning the race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), or national origin, respectively, of the individual.
‘‘(2) GENDER IDENTITY.—The term ‘gender identity’ means the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.
‘‘(3) INCLUDING.—The term ‘including’ means including, but not limited to, consistent with the term’s standard meaning in Federal law.
‘‘(4) SEX.—The term ‘sex’ includes—
‘‘(A) a sex stereotype;
‘‘(B) pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition;
‘‘(C) sexual orientation or gender identity; and
‘‘(D) sex characteristics, including intersex traits.
‘‘(5) SEXUAL ORIENTATION.—The term ‘sexual orientation’ means homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.
heterosexuality, or bisexuality.
‘‘(b) RULES.—In a covered title referred to in subsection (a)—
‘‘(1) (with respect to sex) pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions; and
‘‘(2) (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.’’; and . .
SEC. 1107. CLAIMS.
‘‘The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 5 U.S.C. 2000 bb et seq.) 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.’’.
I got a tax cut and I am hardly "wealthy." Was there a better way to do this? Maybe, but a better bill might not have passed. What's coming will be much worse.
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