The Equality Act will come with devastating unintended consequences for women. Women should have a right to separate spaces from biological males when necessary, but the Equality Act endangers sex-segregated sports as well as safe women-only places like shelters for women and children fleeing abusive and dangerous situations.
While we can all agree that each person, regardless of sex or gender identity, deserves dignity and respect, we must take care to balance the interests of transgender individuals and biological women. In most cases, reasonable accommodations can be made for the former group without harming the latter group. The unnecessary and counterproductive Equality Act goes too far. It includes things like:
- Making it legal for female-identifying men to undress in front of minor girls in public accommodations or vice versa
- Forcing women in emergency shelters, jail or prison to shower and share intimate quarters with biological men
- Gutting the concept of women's only sports by allowing biological males to compete
- Eliminating women-only scholarships and small business programs available for women
- Eliminating the right of women to accept only intimate medical care from female providers
- Normalizing the gender transitioning of minors, which is dangerously on the rise, especially among adolescent girls.
The Equality Act seeks to enshrine in civil rights law a new protected class of sex based on “gender identity” that claims no objective standard, medical diagnosis, or permanent intent. Under this bill, gender identity is nothing more than a person’s perception of self that can be changed at any time, for any reason, and cannot be challenged.
The danger to women when biological men seek to claim female identity should be obvious but is being ignored by proponents of this bill.
This is an affront to women, putting everything that women have worked to gain, our opportunities and protections, at risk. Denying the dangers of the so-called Equality Act for women and girls is a disservice to honest debate. Congress should reject it.