Religious Rights Most Bow to LGBT Laws and Human/Civil Rights

                    

Michael F. Haverluck (OneNewsNow.com)

U.S. ConstitutionAs Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.-Dist. 10) championed the so-called “Equality Act” in a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, he stressed that the bill would make sure religious beliefs cannot be used to “discriminate” against the LGBT community.

As the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Nadler impressed that under the Equality Act, everyone must fall subject to the LGBT agenda – with churches and religious employers, organizations and colleges being afforded no exemptions whatsoever.

“Religion is no excuse for discrimination when it comes to sexual orientation or gender identity,” Nadler asserted Tuesday in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, according to Liberty Counsel.

LGBT trumps all?

Giving testimony against the pro-LGBT bill – also known as HR 5 – was Julia Beck, who is a self-described radical lesbian feminist and the former law and policy co-chair for Baltimore’s LGBTQ Commission. She alerted the Christian community and other faith-based groups about what to expect when or if the proposed legislation passes and becomes enforced.

“This would eliminate women and girls as a coherent legal category worthy of civil rights protections,” Beck revealed, according to Liberty Counsel. “There is no way to tell if someone is lying about being transgender.”

She said that if gender identity becomes recognized under federal law, Americans can expect to see the following scenarios regularly play out:

Male rapists will go to female prisons and will likely assault female inmates – as has already happened in the UK.

Female survivors of rape will be unable to contest male presence in women’s shelters.

Men will dominate women's sports and girls who would have taken first place will be denied scholastic opportunity.

Women who use male pronouns to talk about men may be arrested, fined and banned from social media platforms.

Girls will stay home from schools when they have their periods to avoid harassment by boys in mixed-sex toilets.

Girls and women will no longer have a right to ask for female medical staff or intimate care providers – including elderly or disabled women who are at serious risk of sexual abuse.

Female security officers will no longer have the right to refuse to perform pat-down or intimate searches of males who say they’re female.

Women undergoing security checks will no longer have the right to refuse having those searches performed by men claiming a feminine identity.

And these shocking instances are by no means farfetched …

“It’s already happening,” Beck insisted. “And it's only going to get worse.”

Nip it at the bud …

Legal experts argue that the proposed legislation takes aim at wiping out Americans’ freedom of religion guaranteed by the United States Constitution – giving the LGBT community a free pass to infiltrate virtually every aspect their lives while violating their sincerely held religious beliefs.

“Members of the U.S. House of Representatives recently introduced this bill that threatens the free exercise of religion and free speech,” Liberty Counsel announced in its news release. “HR 5 amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by striking the word ‘sex,’ and inserting ‘sex, sexual orientation, gender identity’ as protected classes throughout the federal code. This amendment applies to employment, housing, rental, public accommodation and more.”

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver indicated that the bill is nothing less than a Trojan Horse used by the LGBT community to force acceptance and its agenda on society.

“Chairman Nadler and Julia Beck gave surprising testimonies at today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing confirming that the so-called ‘Equality Act’ has nothing to do with equality," Staver argued in the release. “This bill pushes the LGBT agenda on all people and targets Christianity in every area of life – including the church.”

He wared about the repercussions of passing such a dangerous piece of pro-LGBT legislation.

“There also will be an increase of sexual assaults when males ‘identifying as females’ are allowed to use girls and women's bathrooms and locker rooms,” the legal expert added. “And that is just the beginning of unconstitutional chaos in America – and even radicals can see that.”

Dr. James Dobson – who founded Focus on the Family and the James Dobson Family Institute decades later – sent an earlier warning that the Equality Act could spell disaster for Americans – if passed in Congress.

“Make no mistake – the so-called Equality Act is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to finish off religious liberty in America once and for all, which ought to be plainly obvious – based upon a cursory reading of the First Amendment,” Dobson contended, according to WND. “Simply put, by creating a protected class of citizens out of the LGBT community, this bill places Christians who believe in traditional marriage at grave legal and civil jeopardy.”

He saw no reservation by Democratic leaders to steamroll over Christians’ rights to live out their faith in order to forward their ultra-left pro-LGBT agenda.

“I wish I could say I was shocked to see the speed with which Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have brought to committee the sweet-sounding but entirely treacherous Equality Act,” Dobson continued. “This decision demonstrates a frightening willingness by those on the left to advance a radical social agenda at a time when our nation already faces so many other divisive challenges.”

According to another conservative nonprofit group, the Pelosi-backed bill would trample the religious rights of a slew of Americans.

“The Heritage Foundation said employers, workers, medical professionals, parents, children, women and nonprofit organizations all would be harmed by the plan from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.),” WND’s Bob Unruh noted.

The Christian leader pointed out the left’s deception that LGBT rights are equal to the civil rights African Americans fought for decades ago during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960 – even comparing it to slavery.

“While no evangelical Christian would ever support hate or violence of any kind against an LGBT individual – or any other person for that matter – to modify the 1964 Civil Rights Act with this wrong-headed bill would not only be legally fraught – it would also put moral equivalence to the unprecedented, centuries-long struggle of countless millions of African Americans to gain freedom from slavery and the persistent, systematic oppression that followed,” Dobson stressed.

Taking another shot at Christian freedom

Besides trying to pass the Equality Act, Nadler is attacking 1993’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the religious freedoms by which Hobby Lobby and other Christian businesses and organizations able to enjoy protections as a result of its passage.

“Bosses should not be able to make health care decisions about the reproductive choices of their employees,” Nadler said in a press release statement he released on the oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding Hobby Lobby and RFRA. “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was intended to be used as a shield – not a sword. No matter how sincerely held a religious belief might be, for-profit employers – like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood – cannot wield their beliefs as a means of denying employees access to critical preventive health care services [including abortion].”

Attempting to forward the LGBT agenda, he tried to argue that Christians are trying to get more religious freedoms than what have been guaranteed to them by the Constitution.

“When we passed RFRA, we sought to restore – not expand – protection for religion,” Nadler continued.” We kept in place the core principle that religion does not excuse for-profit businesses from complying with our laws. Religious belief did not excuse restaurants or hotels from following our civil rights laws in the 1960s or an Amish employer from paying into the Social Security system in the 1980s. It should not be expanded now to allow for-profit companies to override the health care choices of female employees.”

The ultra-left Democrat then implied that Christians living according to biblical teachings on human sexuality is essentially them pushing religious beliefs on others.

“To hold otherwise allows the owners of for-profit companies to impose their beliefs on others – their employees and patrons – who may not share their beliefs and who will be harmed as result. I am hopeful that the Court will confirm that these sort of discriminatory actions by for-profit companies are neither protected by RFRA nor the First Amendment.”