Opinion

SCHILLING: New Legislation Would End Women’s Bathrooms, Changing Rooms — In The Name Of Equality

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Terry Schilling Contributor
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Donald Trump Jr. is exactly right: when female athletes train their whole lives to be the best at their sport, only to be denied their rightfully earned victory — as well as opportunities for scholarship money — by men who enjoy the performance-enhancing advantages of XY chromosomes, it is indeed a “grave injustice.”

But this week, Democrats have introduced legislation to normalize such injustice on a national level through an Orwellian twist of language, calling their bill the “Equality” Act. This bill would make sweeping changes to civil rights laws, replacing our cherished values of freedom and liberty with intimidation and authoritarianism.

Last month, a Connecticut high school girl lost her opportunity to compete in front of college coaches when two biological males predictably finished in the top two spots at the girls’ indoor state track championships, thanks to the Connecticut athletic conference’s policy allowing transgender students to compete according to whatever sex they identify as, rather than as their biological sex.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, either. A male collegiate runner who competed on the men’s team before switching to the women’s team in 2018 is now setting records as one of the top-ranked NCAA women’s sprinters. Two women were recently edged out of the top spot at the women’s cycling world championships by a biological male. A female MMA fighter had her skull crushed by a transgender male competitor. The list of abuses goes on. And don’t you dare speak out against it — former tennis star and lesbian rights advocate Martina Navratilova was recently labeled “transphobic”  for saying it is unfair for men to compete against women.

And these are just examples in the world of sports. Not only would the Equality Act nationalize such policies and make it “discriminatory” for any sports league to restrict competition by biological sex, the bill would disadvantage women and take away fundamental freedoms in a host of other ways, many of which are far more dangerous than being disenfranchised at athletic competitions.

The “Equality” Act would make it illegal to make private spaces such as changing rooms, bathrooms, and even your local gym’s locker room only open to women. Girls in school will have no say over who can enter their bathrooms and locker rooms. Battered women’s shelters can and will be sued and shut down if they refuse to let men who claim to identify as women room with abused women. The “Equality” Act would even criminalize doctors who refuse to perform sex-change surgeries simply because a patient “wants it.”

We know this is what would happen because it’s already been happening on a local and state level, and already people are being punished — like the male physical education teacher who felt uncomfortable supervising a female student changing for gym class — if they refuse to go along with the insanity. Democrats want to take a bad policy that has mostly been isolated to blue states and make it national.

Maybe this makes sense in the left-wing land of intersectionality, where up is down, down is up, everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. Unfortunately, the rest of us will be left shaking our heads at the grave injustices inflicted by their identity politics.

Fortunately, there are some voices on the left who are speaking out against their own party. But the establishment opinion has massive corporate backing seeking to crush any and all dissent. Speaker Pelosi has said that passing the “Equality” Act is a top priority.

Women spent a long time fighting for equal rights and legal protections, including equal opportunities to compete in sports. Adding protections on the basis of “sex” to our non-discrimination law was supposed to create more opportunity for women. But these original feminists also recognized that equality does not mean sameness. Women are equal to men, but different in fundamental ways that our laws have heretofore recognized. The “Equality” Act will do away with all of this, and it will sadly set women back decades in the progress they have made.

The reality is that the “Equality” Act isn’t about equality. It’s about enshrining the supremacy of one ideology over all others into law — at the cost of fairness, safety, and opportunity for generations to come.

Terry Schilling (@PizzaPolitico) is the executive director at American Principles Project, a conservative nonprofit dedicated to putting human dignity at the heart of public policy.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.