Much of corporate America is once again banding together to attack the social construct of the nation and many of its liberties, all in the name of conferring special rights and privileges upon individuals who don’t accept or acknowledge the gender they were born with.
The occasion this time was to get behind the “Equality Act,” which the Democrat-controlled U.S. House recently passed. The misnamed legislation purports to enact law that prohibits “anti-Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer (LGBTQ) discrimination,” but in practice would put the kibosh on almost all other rights and freedoms Americans possess –including speech, association, privacy, and property rights. Most of what the law would do is bastardize the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” discrimination protections.
The “Equality Act” would produce draconian outcomes, including (list compiled by staff of Rep. Vicki Hartzler, R-Mo.):
- Sex-specific domestic violence or homeless shelters, locker rooms at gyms and schools, showering and restroom facilities would be outlawed. Any place of public accommodation and any entity that receives federal funding would be bound by the law’s new definition of sex.
- Women could no longer expect or request female-only hospital rooms, group showers, juvenile detention facilities, or rape crisis centers.
- Women’s and girl’s athletics would be subverted by men and boys transitioning to female, or even those who might falsely claim to be women. Title IX, the federal civil rights provision guaranteeing girls the same educational opportunities as boys, would become irrelevant.
- Employers would be required to recognize gender identity over biological sex when making employment decisions where sex is considered a bona fide occupational qualification. Employers could no longer base hiring decisions where biological sex is a necessary consideration, such as when hiring TSA agents to administer pat-down searches on female passengers, teacher monitoring locker rooms or bathrooms for elementary girls, guards in women’s prisons, or doctors providing intimate medical exams on women.
- Employers offering health insurance, regardless of the organization’s mission, would be required to cover sex reassignment surgery. Religious charities like Little Sisters of the Poor could not opt out of this requirement or take such a case to court.
- Family-owned businesses, like Jack Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop or Barronelle Stutzman’s Arlene’s Flowers, would be required to celebrate same-sex unions and transition procedures.
- “Misgendering” or using the wrong pronouns to describe an individual could be considered harassment and could cost an employee his or her job.
- By amending Title IV of the Civil Rights Act, the ‘desegregation of public education’, the new law would pressure K-12 schools to teach gender fluid and self-affirming gender identities as part of the sex-ed curriculum.
- Secular all-female universities would be required to accept male students identifying as female students.
- The medical profession would not have the option to guide kids experiencing gender dysphoria through puberty without prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or even surgery. As a result, parents who fail to affirm their child’s gender identity would not be able to find appropriate medical care and may lose custody of their child.
- Faith-based foster care and adoption care agencies that prefer child placements with a mother and a father will be labeled “discriminatory” and be forced to permanently closed.
- Would provide a universal right to abortion, compromise taxpayer safeguards against funding abortion, and eliminate conscience protections for health care providers who do not want to participate in abortion.
For these culture-altering, freedom-killing, deviant outcomes, much of corporate America banded together to advocate for the passage of the bill. Driven and pulled together by the radical pro-LGBTQ Human Rights Campaign, more than 200 companies signed on to HRC’s “Business Coalition for the Equality Act.”
“The overwhelming majority of America’s leading businesses have already started addressing workplace fairness for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) employees,” the coalition states. “But we still need a federal standard that treats all employees the same.”
As Hartzler explained, the outcome would mean that no oneis treated the same, either intentionally or unintentionally trampling upon the rights of everyone else to the favor of LGBT persons.
The participating companies in the coalition, which HRC claims account for an aggregate $4.7 trillion in revenue and employ almost 11 million people, include Amazon, American Airlines, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Facebook, General Motors, Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nike, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Target, Twitter, United Airlines, United Parcel Service, Verizon, Visa, and Wells Fargo. Dozens of other well-known major corporations are on the list also.
A similar effort with many of the same companies was undertaken a couple of years ago in an attack on the state of North Carolina, which had passed a law that required individuals to use rest rooms and public dressing facilities according the gender designated on their birth certificates (private businesses could set policies for their facilities however they wanted). The law sought to rectify a Charlotte ordinance that forced all private businesses to all “transgender” and “gender fluid” people to relieve themselves in the bathrooms of their choice, regardless of sex. HRC also led that corporate pressure campaign, which succeeded with a partial repeal of the law.
So many – if not the vast majority – of corporations have weighed in heavily in favor of LGBTQ privileges and set asides, and clearly are unconcerned about potential customers and investors who would oppose the “Equality Act” due to religious conscience, moral objection, and the erosion of their own rights and freedoms. Some companies on the list even made powerful statements in support of HRC’s initiative:
“To help us achieve our goal of recruiting the nation’s top employees, we know that we must foster a business culture that is welcoming to all, regardless of sexual orientation, or gender, or race, or other status. By the same token, if our nation is to compete on a global stage, our federal laws must ensure that all employees are treated with the same respect. That is why The Hershey Company supports the Human Rights Campaign and the Equality Act.”
“At Kellogg, we firmly believe in diversity, equality and inclusion in the workplace, marketplace and in the communities where we work and live. Supporting the Equality Act demonstrates our continued commitment to creating an environment in which all employees are included, treated with dignity and respect, and are empowered to achieve their full potential.”
The vast swath of the economy covered by these participating corporations makes it impossible for anyone who disagrees with their political positions to avoid them. Only the U.S. Senate and President Trump stand in the way – for now.