President Joe Biden praised the Equality Act, urged Congress to quickly pass it, and said it would provide "long overdue federal civil rights protections," as well as "codifying the courage and resilience of the LGBTQ+ movement into enduring law."
Biden, who in 2016 officiated a same-sex wedding, also touted his Jan. 20 executive order on "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual orientation." The order stated his administration's policy of recognizing federal civil rights protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.
The legislation, which passed the House in 2019, is a policy priority of pro-LGBT groups such as the Human Rights Campaign. Biden has promised to sign it in his first 100 days in office.
Anderson said the bill privileges "men who identify as women" over the safety of women.
"If this bill becomes law," Anderson said, men who identify as transgender women would "have a civil right to spend the night in a battered women's shelter, disrobe in a women's locker room, and compete on a women's sports team-even children at K-12 public schools."
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He claimed that should the bill become law, "Pope Francis would be treated as the legal equivalent of a Jim Crow segregationalist" due to his opposition to transgender ideology and the redefinition of marriage.
"And no one-not even the act's sponsors-can tell us what would be required under the act to avoid committing 'discrimination' in the case of 'non-binary' gender identities," said Anderson.
A person who identifies as being "non-binary" does not align themselves as either male or female.
Erika Bachiochi, a pro-life legal scholar and a fellow at the EPPC, said that the Equality Act could promote abortion as a right and "further incentivize employers to prefer abortion for their pregnant employees over far more costly accommodations for parenting."