President Joe Biden voiced support for the passage of the controversial Equality Act during the State of the Union Address on Tuesday.
The Equality Act was originally passed by the House in February 2021. The bill expands the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and so-called gender identity, and some have warned that the legislation would force biological men into girl’s sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms, as well as force doctors to perform sex change surgeries. (RELATED: ‘I Live A Parasitic Lifestyle’: Trans Canadian Seeking Medically Assisted Suicide Over ‘Severe Mental Anguish’)
“Let’s also pass the bipartisan Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender young people, can live with safety and dignity,” Biden said in the speech.
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have supported this bill in previous comments.
“Let’s send the Equality Act to President Biden’s desk. We must increase protections for LGBTQ+ Americans across the country. The onslaught of state bills targeting transgender Americans and their families is wrong,” Harris said in a March 2022 tweet.
The act mandates that biological males cannot be denied access to female locker rooms and shelters. The legislation also explicitly circumvents the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), meaning that Americans can’t claim religious exemptions from the Act’s stipulations.
“This is a government using its power to tell us to bow down to the will of a cultural elite in this town who want to tell us what we’re supposed to believe. We’re not going to do that,” Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy previously said.
“The bill would erase the concepts of male and female throughout the most basic parts of American life — sports, locker rooms, small businesses, classrooms, and even parent-child relationships in the home,” Family Policy Alliance President and CEO Craig DeRoche told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Feminist activist Kara Dansky blasted the bill on Tucker Carlson Tonight in March 2021, calling it “an absolute emergency” since it would “enshrine so-called gender identity into law.”
The Equality Act would also force doctors to perform sex change surgeries, according to some medical professionals and experts.