Catholic League: Democrats’ Equality Act is an “Assault on Christianity”

In a statement Monday, Catholic League president Bill Donohue warned that the Equality Act, currently being pushed towards passage by congressional Democrats, would “promote the most comprehensive assault on Christianity ever written into law.”

Supported by Democrats and the Biden administration, the Equality Act would make amendments to the Civil Rights Act by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Conservatives have long signaled their opposition to the bill, but even some feminists and women’s groups on the left have expressed concern about how the bill would affect biological women. Particularly, there is concern about opening up women-only spaces, like battered shelters, to transgender “women.”

In his comments this week, Donohue said that while the bill’s champions promote it as a step towards “ending discrimination,” the Equality Act would actually rewrite the legal definition of sex as it has been used in case law for decades. He insisted that it would also dismantle the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by giving gay rights a privileged place above religious freedom.

Donohue noted that the bill would force healthcare practitioners to provide “hormone therapies and surgical procedures that are required to change the physical characteristics associated with sex changes,” regardless of how those doctors and nurses may feel about the transgender issue.

“It has become increasingly clear that the expansion of rights to transgender women — really biological males who identify as female — has come at the expense of rights for biological females,” Donohue wrote. “Boys and men would be allowed to compete in sports with girls and women, thus unfairly altering women’s athletics. Biological males can use the locker rooms, restrooms and shower facilities that have always been reserved for females.”

Donohue warned that the bill would put men and women of faith in a difficult position, unable to voice their opposition to these inclusions without risking lawsuits or even prosecution.

“Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Muslims, and many other religious communities could not raise religious liberty objections to any of the aforementioned rights of transgender women,” Donohue wrote. “It is hard for the public to understand, especially Catholics, why such allegedly ‘devout Catholics’ as Biden and Pelosi would want to champion such patently anti-Christian legislation as the Equality Act.”

Pelosi has indeed come out in support of the bill, which is set to be voted on next week.

“Our nation was founded on the promise that all are created equal and are worthy of dignity and respect, regardless of who they are or whom they love,” said the House Speaker. “With the reintroduction of the Equality Act, Congressional Democrats are making a resounding commitment to this truth: that all Americans must be treated equally under the law, not just in the workplace, but in every place.”

Problem is: They already are. This bill, far from ensuring “equality,” will confer special rights on a select few. And it will be done at the expense of the Democratic Party’s single-biggest constituency: Women.