Law Equality Act: Should Gender Dysphoria (or Sexual Orientation) Constitute A Protected Class?

[NoDak]

The Equality Act would essentially amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to explicitly include sexual orientation alongside race, national origin, sex, disability, and religion. It basically aims to make LGB(T) a fully protected class at the federal level with a slew of anti-discrimination protections similar to those which have existed in countries such as Norway and Sweden since the 1980s.

As mentioned before and contrary to popular belief, outside of issues such as legalizing same-sex activity between consenting adults (2003), repealing "don't ask, don't tell" military service (2011), being granted marriage and adoption equality (2015-16) nationwide, there aren't actually any federally enacted anti-discrimination laws. There is a patchwork of legislation that is dependent on and at the discretion of individual states.

Of course, this bill also includes "gender identity" and the rub here isn't even so much transgender inclusion in general as that was already shoehorned onto the LGB banner about a decade ago in the wake of the ENDA controversy with disagreements that arose between movement and community, the fundamental differences between gender identity and sexual orientation. "Trans-activism" has very powerful and influential financial benefactors, lobby organizations and co-opted LGB rights groups pushing its ideology at numerous levels of society.

No, the problem is that after hearing years of intellectually dishonest arguments that (biological) sex and gender are two separate things, this legislation would redefine sex across all federal laws. Your "gender identity" is your sex afterall apparently, even with virtually no basis in reality. The opposition is building, full articles in the hyperlinks.

NR: Bipartisan Women’s Rights Groups Protest the Equality Act

The Equality Act — which would amend civil-rights legislation to explicitly include “gender identity” as a protected characteristic and mandate all federally funded entities to interpret sex as “gender identity”– is on the House’s agenda. It will likely pass.

“Gender Identity” is the gender or sex one feels oneself to be. Perhaps because of the ideology’s internal incoherence, the ramifications of legally enshrined “gender identity” are poorly understood. Media spin, activist studies, pseudoscience, and the conflation of “gender identity” with sex and sexual orientation have confused the matter.

What are the connotations of the phrase “gender identity,” which the Equality Act would enshrine in the U.S. Code? To a conservative, it might mean something vague relating to bathrooms and pronouns. To a liberal, it might imply opposition to bigotry. But there is a growing movement, spanning left and right, of people who understand that gender-identity ideology poses harmful consequences for women and children. They are now putting aside their political differences and joining forces...

PD: The Many Harms of Gender Identity Laws: A Mother of a Trans-Identifying Teen Speaks Out

All people should be protected from harassment and harm, no matter how they identify. But we as a society must be allowed to reasonably act on the basis of sex when medical treatment, privacy, and safety are at stake. If “gender identity” becomes a protected class, women and children are the ones who will suffer most.

The Equality Act (H.R.2282, S.1006) proposes to redefine sex across all federal laws and add “gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a prohibited category of discrimination in public spaces. Assuming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi keeps her promise, the Equality Act will soon be voted on in the House of Representatives. If it were to pass there, and were ever passed in the Senate and signed into law, it would cause great harm.

“Gender identity” is a term that refers to how people choose to identify themselves based on their feelings. There is no test to determine one’s gender identity; it is simply asserted. Novel gender identities, such as “transgender” or “nonbinary,” have become shockingly common, especially among young people. Unlike protected classes such as race and sex, “gender identity” has no basis in material reality. There is no science to prove its existence. Yet a rapidly increasing number of states and municipalities have passed laws to prohibit discrimination on the basis of one’s self-asserted, subjective, unprovable “gender identity.”

While laws protecting “gender identity” sound fair and may be well-intentioned, the unintended harms that they cause are quite serious. As the mother of a transgender-identifying teen, my concerns are personal.

What Gives The Trans Lobby The Right To Chastise Martina Navratilova?

Many of us have been waiting a very long time for ‘peak trans’ to be reached, and for liberals, faint-hearted feminists, journalists and politicians to break out of their cowardly complacency and face the reality – that extreme trans activism is misogyny. Perhaps peak trans may well have arrived, thanks to the latest valiant efforts of the trans bullies.

The latest target in the vicious and often violent war being raged by extreme trans activists is one of my all-time heroes – the world tennis champion and LGB rights campaigner, Martina Navtatilova.

Navratilova has been accused of being "transphobic" as a result of a tweet responding to a question from a follower about transgender women in sport.

"Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard", tweeted Martina.

"For me it’s all about fairness. Which means taking every case individually… there is no cookie cutter way of doing things."

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Except the problem is, nothing but total capitulation and self-flagellation is enough for the trans-Taliban.

Martina’s main accuser is Dr Rachel McKinnon, an academic philosopher, transgender activist and competitive cyclist who won a women’s event at the UCI Masters Track World Championship, earlier this year. McKinnon, who I will refer to as ‘he’ and ‘him’ as his behavior appears to me to be classic male machismo, demanded that Navratilova apologize and criticized the comments. Martina did apologize, and deleted the tweet, but this was not anywhere near good enough.

Not to be floored by a Twitter spat, Martina stood by her comments and said she wouldn’t be ‘bullied’ into silence. Realizing that McKinnon and his supporters were treating this hounding of her as a blood sport, Martina left the conversation, saying, "it seems to be my decades of speaking out against unfairness and inequality just don’t count with you at all", with McKinnon agreeing, saying, that Martina’s record of fighting for LGBT equality, "doesn’t change the fact that you did something very wrong today. Past good deeds don’t give someone a pass."

If anything gives us a clue as to the narcissistic element of the trans activist campaign it is this tweet from McKinnon:

"You… realize I’m a world champion trans woman athlete who happens to publish and speak worldwide on trans athlete rights… right?"

That is correct, dear readers. McKinnon did the, "Don’t you know who I am", to MARTINA!

At the age of 18 Martina became a refugee from the hell of Czech Communism, quickly rising to fame at the top of women’s tennis where she remained for 25 years. As soon as it became public knowledge that Martina was a lesbian, her sponsors withdrew support, much of the public, including tennis fans, turned against her, with her regularly being booed during a game. Much of the media turned on her. She was slated for having muscles, and the fact that she was strong and determined somehow became negative traits, attributed to her being ‘queer’.

For me and countless other lesbians of my generation, seeing Martina walk out onto the court at Wimbledon was the best feeling in the world. Suddenly there this woman who was immensely talented, a feminist, and even won the (grudging) respect of the men in the sport. I thought, "if she can do it after all she’s been through, so can I."

But none of this impresses McKinnon, who is not known for his generous response to those who question, however sensitively, any aspect of transgender ideology and associated demands. Take this article in which McKinnon explains how even people who are trying to be trans allies are getting it all wrong for not simply agreeing with him. McKinnon even has a series of videos explaining why he is entitled to compete in women’s races, despite the clear built-in advantage this gives him.

McKinnon identifies as a lesbian, teaches his students that he is one, talks approvingly of the cotton ceiling, says lesbians can ‘get over their genital hangups’ and ‘cope just fine’, and has called critics Nazis.

Fellow philosopher Professor Kathleen Stock says: "The reason I know that the academic world is a sexist one is that a natal female could never behave as aggressively online, misrepresent empirical facts to suit her purposes, or make such generally terrible arguments as McKinnon does, and still be taken seriously."

Finally, the world is waking up to the fact that the extreme transgender activists are nothing but men’s rights vigilantes, that hate women, but that unfortunately had the majority of well-meaning liberals in the palm of their hands. Never has any so-called social justice movement in the past commanded such authority and instilled such fear. Coming after Navratilova was one bad move too many.

 

[spin]

How close is this act to being passed?

I don't really need to have an opinion on something that won't pass anyway

 

[IDL]

I wonder if this is America's version of the Canadian bill C-16

It does get bizarre trying to figure out implications of something based around the nebulous concept of 'gender identity'

Also you have to wonder where this stuff ends.

 

[oldshadow]

To open ended.

Doesn’t protect the rights of the rest of the people.

 

[tinker_190]

Just reflecting on the thread title and the question it poses, it would seem that anyone could make an unfalsifiable claim to be a member of this class.

 

[VivaRevolution]

I have said it before, and I will again. I am a social libertarian. People should have the right to adopt kids, get married, ect., No matter what they choose to do in their life. We should all be equal in the eyes of the law.

The civil Rights act was the exception to the rule. The immediate need to address that injustice and systemic discrimination was the rationale for removing the right of private business from being able to refuse service, or hire anyone they choose.

You do not have the right for the government to regulate equal treatment in society.

You shouldnt have a right for employer protection based on your sexual orientation, or gender identity.

If chic-fillet doesn't want to hire gay or trans people, they shouldn't have to. Their is no great injustice in this country against gay or trans people that justifies that kind of government intervention into our society.

 

[nac386]

This bill includes the entire LGBT banner. Are we also discussing whether or not sexual orientation should be a protected class, or just gender identity?

I know that you are separating the T intentionally because you don't think it should be included with orientation, and I understand your argument for that. But I would be interested to hear if this forum would even be in favor LGB being a protected class.

 

[Ripskater]

No

It's a mental illness and you have to fire people who go crazy. You can't have these people working for you.

 

[Trotsky]

Yes, obviously

To open ended.

Doesn’t protect the rights of the rest of the people.

Huh?

 

[lifelessheap]

All laws should apply to people equally. Nobody is special.

 

[nac386]

You shouldnt have a right for employer protection based on your sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Is that also how you feel about race, gender, and religion?

 

[VivaRevolution]

Is that also how you feel about race, gender, and religion?

Yes, with the exception of when this country was on the verge of melting down over systemic racial discrimination.

I agree with the civil Rights act, but only because it was a extreme scenario.

Edit: I mean specifically the regulations on private entities, not the voting rights act stuff, of course.

 

[NoDak]

This bill includes the entire LGBT banner. Are we also discussing whether or not sexual orientation should be a protected class, or just gender identity?

It's all on the table, at a low estimate there's at least a half dozen LGBT related threads a week started on this subforum but transgenderism or "gender identity" is by far the most controversial component and there's a lot of reasons for that.

I know that you are separating the T intentionally because you don't think it should be included with orientation, and I understand your argument for that. But I would be interested to hear if this forum would even be in favor LGB being a protected class.

They aren't, and one of the several reasons for starting the OP was to lay out and demonstrate that LGB is not a 'protected class' in the way people assume or modern social outrage culture would make it seem. This has come up a few times in random pages of random threads discussing very specific things or instances, where people simply post an article or video without any input of their own. Plus, this is all encompassing legislation at a federal level. I'm also tired of repeating the same stuff.

 

[nac386]

It's all on the table, at a low estimate there's at least a half dozen LGBT related threads a week started on this subforum but gender identity is by far the most controversial component.

I agree that's it's the most controversial, and I bet it has the lowest approval rate on this forum. I am curious though how many people support one but not the other, and how many people support having no protected classes at all. I've talked to several guys on here who do not believe race/religion/gender should be protected at all.

They aren't, and one of the several reasons for starting the OP was to lay out and demonstrate that LGB is not a 'protected class' in the way people assume or modern social outrage culture would make it seem. This has come up a few times in random pages of random threads discussing very specific things or instances, where people will also simply post an article or video without any input of their own. This is all encompassing legislation at a federal level. I'm also tired of repeating the same stuff.

I think a lot of people came to realize that LGB was not protected when that bakery went on trial for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

 

[NoDak]

Just reflecting on the thread title and the question it poses, it would seem that anyone could make an unfalsifiable claim to be a member of this class.

I also kind of scratch my head at some of these anti-discrimination measures thinking, "How the fuck would anyone even know?" It's more than a little cringeworthy when you can discern somebody's sexual orientation from nothing more than their individual appearance, demeanor or mannerisms.

That is certainly a (campy) thing - a very stereotypical image permanently burned into public consciousness - but uh, actually isn't the majority. Especially if we aren't erasing bisexual people, about two-thirds of whom are not even 'open' about their orientation to their immediate family and inner social circles.

 

[I am your real dad]

This is America,
We are all EQUAL
No SPECIAL TREATMENT for anyone.
If you don't make it
its your own fault.

 

[Fugazy]

Nope.

Simple.

 

[Ripskater]

There should not be any protected classes.

 

[oldshadow]

Yes, obviously



Huh?

If you have a dick you don’t belong in the women’s changing room and shower.

Nor in women’s sports.

Just because you want to dress like a woman or “ feel” like one.

Post op I and the right chemical test and I don’t care.

 

[Trotsky]

If you have a dick you don’t belong in the women’s changing room and shower.

Nor in women’s sports.

Just because you want to dress like a woman or “ feel” like one.

Post op I and the right chemical test and I don’t care.

Okay, I'm fine with that perspective.

But that doesn't mean that "pre-op" transgendered persons should be unprotected against employment discrimination. Frankly, I don't even know how discriminatory bodies would be able to tailor that distinction without groin checking.