User:JG2027/Equality Act (United States)


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Support
The Equality Act is supported by more than 547 national, state and local organizations. These different organizations are related to human rights, social justice, '''and religious groups. All of these organizations support the Equality Act.'''

Organizations related to human rights and social justice.

American Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, GLSEN, Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch, Southern Poverty Law Center, Lambda Legal, the Navajo Nation, the National Organization for Women, NAACP, AARP

National professional organizations

American Psychological Association,American Medical Association, American Counseling Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Bar Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as the National PTA.

American businesses

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, IBM, Facebook, Airbnb, Twitter, Intel, Red Hat and Netflix. Other companies supporting the act include 3M, Kellogg's, Visa, Starbucks, Mastercard, Johnson & Johnson, Alaska Airlines, and American Airlines.

Celebrities

Alexandra Billings, Karamo Brown, Gloria Calderón Kellett, Charlie Carver, Max Carver, Nyle DiMarco, Sally Field, Marcia Gay Harden, Dustin Lance Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Justina Machado, Adam Rippon, Taylor Swift, Bella Thorne, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Feminist and women's groups

National Organization for Women, 9to5: the National Association of Working Women, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Feminist Majority, Girls, Inc., Jewish Women International, The National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda, NARAL, MANA, A National Latina Organization, MomsRising, National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF), National Association for Female Executives, National Women's Health Network, National Women's Law Center, Planned Parenthood, Positive Women's Network-USA, and United State of Women.

Religious groups

Episcopal Church, The United Methodist Church, The United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, More Light Presbyterians, African American Ministers in Action, The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, The Union for Reform Judaism, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Muslims for Progressive Values, the Hindu American Foundation, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Other endorsements

Calling for the bill's passage in 2016, civil rights icon John Lewis said, "This legislation is what justice requires. This legislation is what justice demands. And like the Supreme Court's recent decision, it is long overdue ... We are a society committed to equal justice under the law. ... We have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity."

Opposition
Numerous political pundits and politicians have stated their opposition to the Equality Act at various times. Notable among these was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), which caused a brief political feud between her and Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL). Greene had said in a speech that the proposed act "destroys God's creation, ... completely annihilates women's rights and religious freedoms", and "puts trans rights above women's rights".

Fox News anchor, Tucker Carlson, called the Equality Act a "terrifying agenda that eliminates women". Candace Owens appeared on Carlson's Fox News talk show in the same segment and said about the Equality Act that Democrats "don't know what equality is".

Some single-issue women's groups have opposed the provision of the bill which defines sex to include gender identity. Some groups say that the provision endangers the "sex-based rights" of women and girls, including women's sports and women-only spaces such as locker rooms, prisons, and shelters. Among these groups has been the Women's Human Rights Campaign USA (WHRC USA), the Women's Liberation Front (WoLF), Feminists in Struggle (FiST), Standing for Women, and Save Women's Sports. They oppose the bill unless it is amended to protect sex and not gender identity. Both WHRC USA and FIST have proposed amendments to the act and not recognize gender identity. Some organization that oppose the Equality Act are funded by fundamentalist anti-LGBT hate groups(as designated by the SPLC) such as the Alliance Defending Freedom. The organization has shifted their messaging to sound more secular and feminist, although this is disputed by its supporters having anti-LGBT views.

Georgia State University criminology professor Callie H. Burt published a paper in the June 2020 issue of Feminist Criminology in which she examined the potential effects of the Equality Act on women's rights. While saying the act is "laudable in its aims", Burt lamented the lack of scrutiny and discussion by Democratic representatives in Congress into the real consequences the act's "imprecise language" would bring to women: "The result is the erosion of females' provisions, which include sex-separated spaces (e.g., prisons, locker rooms, shelters), opportunities and competitions (e.g., awards, scholarships, sports), and events (e.g., meetings, groups, festivals)". She also said, "I submit that the bill, in current form, fails to strike a balance between the rights, needs, and interests of two marginalized (and overlapping) groups—trans people and females—and instead prioritizes the demands of trans people over the hard-won rights of female people."

The Economist, a British newspaper, stated in October 2020 that the original draft of the act endangers the rights of women in areas such as sports, where they would be at a physical disadvantage having to compete against trans women. When it comes to biological-sex segregated spaces, such as public bathrooms and prisons, the newspaper states that "parts of the bill appear to put the needs of transgender people above those of women. This is because the act redefines 'sex' in Title IX and other amendments of the Civil Rights Act to include 'gender identity; rather than making transgenderism a protected category of its own. Its definition of 'gender identity' is fuzzy and appears to downplay the reality of sex."

Law professor Douglas Laycock told NPR that the law is "less necessary" now, after the Bostock decision, and that the bill "protects the rights of one side, but attempts to destroy the rights of the other side."

Some religious leaders oppose the bill for various reasons, saying for example that it would infringe on religious liberty.

On March 20, 2019, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter addressed to the United States Senate that opposed the Equality Act on the grounds of freedom of expression and freedom of religion, among other concerns.

On May 7, 2019, a coalition of Christian organizations sent a letter to the House of Representatives stating their opposition to the Equality Act. In the letter, the groups expressed that the act "undermines religious freedom, and threatens charitable nonprofits and the people they serve, regulates free speech, hinders quality health care, and endangers the privacy and safety of women and girls." In addition to four committee chairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, signers included leaders from the Christian Legal Society, the Center for Law and Religious Freedom, the Center for Public Justice, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty (affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod), the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said that "The Equality Act is the most comprehensive assault on religious liberty, the right to life, and privacy rights ever packaged into one bill." Donohue also stated his concern that "Catholic hospitals would no longer be allowed to govern as Catholic facilities, threatening healthcare for everyone, especially the poor."

On May 16, 2019, Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association sent a letter to lawmakers in the House expressing concern that the act, as written, would roll back religious liberty protections. "Federal law has long recognized that certain services can present conflict for some faith-based health care providers with religious or moral objections to providing those services, and protected them from having to do so. We are concerned that the Equality Act omits and could erode or reduce those protections." The legislation, she said, "lacks conscience protection language and precludes application of RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act)."

The American Family Association published an article in April 2019 opposing the act.

On May 13, 2019, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement that read in part, "The Equality Act now before Congress is not balanced and does not meet the standard of fairness for all. While providing extremely broad protections for LGBT rights, the Equality Act provides no protections for religious freedom". In 2021, the LDS Church endorsed a competing bill, the Fairness for All Act. The competing bill would add faith-based exemptions to anti-discrimination law. Other than the LDS Church, its supporters have included the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

The Heritage Foundation has argued that the act would adversely affect five groups of people (employers and workers; medical professionals; parents and children; non-profit organizations and their volunteers; and women), and they describe specific harms the Foundation believes each group would experience from the act's passage.

Transgender rights and the Equality Act
'''Much of the concern surrounding the Equality Act stems from the protections that would be guaranteed for transgender individuals in sports and also in access to sex-segregated spaces. It is argued that these protections would endanger women in sex-segregated spaces such as bathrooms and prisons. However, t'''he National Taskforce to End Sexual and Domestic Violence and over 250 anti-sexual assault organizations have condemned opponents' attempts to portray transgender people as sexual predators and contends it is untrue that protections for transgender people endanger women's safety and privacy. The Taskforce's joint letter was signed by over 250 survivor organizations in full support of full and equal access for the transgender community, including in restrooms and locker rooms. The letter notes the [21] states and 200+ municipalities that have protected transgender people's access to facilities have not seen an increase in sexual violence and public safety incidents due to nondiscrimination laws. The letter also notes that anti-transgender initiatives put transgender people at further risk of assault.

Religious organizations that have expressed their support for the act claim that this act would protect transgender children and people; however, this has been overshadowed by the strong opposition by other religious groups and organizations.

Religious organizations and registered charities that have given public support to the act include Advocates for Youth, and various Catholic leaders and lobbying organizations such as Father James Martin S.J., Network, and USA. Catholic theologian and nun Joan Chittister released a statement saying that the Equality Act "must be passed, must be extended, and must be lived if religion itself is to be true". The Interfaith Alliance endorsed the Equality Act as part of "Faith for Equality", a coalition which provided a letter signed by over 17,000 religious Americans to Senator Chris Coons in support of the act.

Edith Guffey, a UCC minister and mother of a transgender, non-binary child testified to Congress in support of the Equality Act, saying "We should all be able to agree on this one thing, the law should treat all our children, God's children, equally. All of our children deserve to be treated with and respect. Every single one of us would go to the mat for our children. None of us wants them to be turned away or discriminated against for any reason."

At a 2021 Senate hearing for the Equality Act, 16-year-old Stella Keating became the first transgender teenager to testify before Congress saying, "Right now, I could be denied medical care or be evicted for simply being transgender in many states. ... What if I'm offered a dream job in a state where I can be discriminated against? Even if my employer is supportive, I still have to live somewhere. Eat in restaurants. Have a doctor", she added. "This is the United States of America. The country that I love. Every young person ... regardless of who they are or who they love, should be able to be excited about their future."