The Equality Act: A Christian Overview

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March 13, 2021

Rapp Report Daily episode 162 Andrew and Bud provide a Christian perspective of the Equality Act. This bill is Romans 1 coming to America. This bill will protect sexual perversion. This episode will cover the impacts of this bill on first amendment freedoms, economic, medical, educational, governmental, women, children, and Christian. Resources mentioned: The Equality...

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01:02: Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.
01:08: This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
01:19: Well, welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, with my co -host from the sunny land of Florida.
01:29: Greetings, Andrew. Are you feeling any wiser today? Oh, yeah. There's fresh hope every morning, right?
01:35: I was just thinking bud is wiser, you know, just bud wiser. If you come in my office, you'll see
01:41: I do have a neon bud sign. I don't have it turned on right now, and it is not, you know, the promotion of alcoholism.
01:50: It's your name. All right.
01:55: Well, to start off, before we get into our topic today, today we're going to deal with a topic that we really would prefer not to deal with, and we've had a couple of these type of topics we prefer not to deal with, but we do this for you.
02:08: So to help educate you on what's going on in the world, this topic will be on the
02:13: Equality Act that is going through, I guess it's past, is it past the house?
02:22: It's going to the Senate. I think it needs 60 votes, which I don't think it's going to get, but we're going to talk about this bill, the importance for you, especially as a
02:29: Christian, to understand this bill and its effects, and how to have a
02:35: Christian response to this and a Christian view of it. So that's what we're going to deal with. Before we do, we got an email that someone sent in.
02:44: So Rodney contacted us, and this is a little bit of a longer email, so I'm going to chop it up. There's some things he's asking.
02:50: The main question he's asking we're going to answer, but there's a couple of things that are going to be educational for folks because there's things that are, things he says that people think, and we'll just need to give some corrections.
03:01: So he says, how should, how should we address
03:07: God? So that's really his main question. How do we address God? We do, we do not know the correct pronunciation of the
03:14: Tetradermaton because of the ancient Israelites apparently only spoke it in the Temple, and even then only on specific holidays, and after the
03:24: Romans destroyed the Temple, they no longer had, for lack of a better word, permission to do so, and always said
03:31: El Elohim Adonai or the like. So before we get to his main question, how do we address God, I want to do this one correction here.
03:38: Many people have this thinking that the name for God is the
03:43: Tetradermagon, Tetradermaton, and that it was not spoken, and that's true. It wasn't spoken.
03:49: It wasn't, as he's saying, spoken only in the Temple. It just wasn't spoken at all. They would replace it with Adonai.
03:56: This is because of the second commandment to not speak God's name in vain.
04:02: So there's three names in the Old Testament for God. Elohim, El would be the singular version.
04:09: Elohim is plural. So Elohim, Adonai, and what we might say is
04:15: Yahweh or Jehovah, which is referring to the Tetradermaton. Now, as you look at those three,
04:22: Adonai is used for men. It means Lord. You can have that being used for men. Elohim is not used in men.
04:30: There's one place where it is used referring to men as judges, and that's in Psalms, and the assumption there is that that's still, it's when men are acting in the role of God as a judge.
04:44: So Elohim would be the name for God. But when Moses in Exodus asked what should he call, he knows the names of the gods of Egypt, what is your name?
04:56: He says, I am. I am that I am. And the I am is the Tetradermaton.
05:01: So you could say, call him I am. That's really the language.
05:09: I mean, we have the word Messiah. In Greek, it's Christ. In English, it's anointed one.
05:15: So it really is a question of the language. So Jewish people didn't use that to not violate the, to use
05:22: God's name in vain. It wasn't that it was used in the temple. It wasn't used at all. And so, so how do we address?
05:29: So he says, should we be addressing the Creator with a specific name or title, or would we be attempting to even say the personal name of God be wrong?
05:41: Should we only address him as God or Adonai, or is it somewhat of a
05:47: Christian liberty in which he forgives us if we address him correctly, incorrectly, because he has promised to forgive us all our sins and cast them from the east to the west and remember them no more because our faith in Jesus is a 20 -day sacrifice.
06:03: So let me, again, just kind of give some correction here. God doesn't forget our sin. He's omniscient.
06:08: He knows everything. When he uses the language saying that he's going to forget it east from the west, it's the idea he's not going to bring it up anymore.
06:17: Every sin we've ever committed was paid at the cross according to Colossians. It was, that's where the payment was made.
06:24: So they're all, all of our sins were future to the cross. So it's not an idea of that there's some sort of sin.
06:32: Some people would say, well, we don't use God's name properly pronounced, but the question here is in what language?
06:39: You know, you're going to have a different pronunciation based on the language. So as you look, you know, what is it you're going to do?
06:47: You have names that could be pronounced one way, and my name, Andrew, you know, would be different in Spanish than in English.
06:56: In English, where we'd say Andrew, it's actually from the Greek, you know, but in Spanish, that's different.
07:04: Is it wrong? No, it's the different, a different language has a different pronunciation. So if you call Christ Messiah or you call
07:10: Christ Christ, is it a difference? Yeah, the difference is the language, but the meaning is still the same.
07:15: The name is still the same. So I don't think there's a specific word, a specific way to answer it, but we have to use, you know, there's people that say you have to say
07:27: Jesus, you can't say Jesus, you say Yeshua, that's what his name would be. Yeah, and in,
07:33: I guess, in really in Latin and where we get our derivative of, we call him
07:39: Jesus, but it's the same name. So I don't, there's some people that get hung up, I think, on the specifics of this specific name, and I just don't think that that's, we don't want to go too far to say that it's a sin when
07:53: God has never said, use only this name for me. And if he did, then the Jews would have been in sin for all those years, not using the name, substituting it out of a fear of not using it in vain.
08:04: They actually would be committing the sin of not using it properly. So if that was the case,
08:10: I would think God would have said something about that, and we don't see him saying anything about that. So anything you want to add to that?
08:16: No, you know, I'm just thinking, Paul says what was written, you know, before was written for our instruction,
08:23: God has revealed his name to us. And even if you go to Christ in the model prayer for disciples, for those who are regenerate, the model that we're using prayer is our
08:36: Father. So that speaks to the personal nature of God and the familial nature in Christ that we have with him.
08:47: So yeah, I think it wasn't revealed for us not to know, nor fail to use.
08:55: There you go. So with that, let's get into our topic. And just to, you know, this is one of these things that I'm hoping,
09:05: Bud, that it doesn't put you to sleep, even though we're going to refer to an article that you wrote. Well, oh my goodness.
09:12: I apologize up front. I felt like I've needed to repent all week, research this stuff, because it is just so vile.
09:20: You went through, so there's an article at strivingforeturning .org. You can read the article.
09:26: It's linked in the show notes. The Equality Act, A Christian Overview. It's titled the same as this podcast episode.
09:32: So if you read that, we're not going to have time to cover everything that Bud put together in this.
09:41: And this is, you've edited it since I read it, and there's more in here I could see. You know, seriously,
09:47: I'm researching and I'm making my notes. I started this thing three or four times and deleted it and started over because I was,
09:55: I would study something and I'm like, well, wow, this, we need to speak to this. You need to be aware of the impact here.
10:01: And, and, oh, there's this too. So yeah, this is pretty expansive. And I tried to cover a lot of ground about the potential impact that, that this, this monster would create throughout society.
10:15: And so, yeah, it's, it's not a fun read. Well, it, it's not a fun read.
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11:31: You know what? There better be some royalties forthcoming as a result of this. I'm just saying, get
11:36: Lindell on the phone and make it happen. I am trying to get him on the phone, actually. I'm trying.
11:42: But, so let's, let's deal with the idea of the Equality Act. This is an act where it's, what they're trying to do with this, just to bring people up to speed who may not be following the news, basically what they're trying to do is take the civil rights laws that were passed back in the 60s and where you're not allowed to have discrimination, right?
12:05: You can't discriminate against someone's race, the color of their skin. There's only one human race, but how much melanin they have in their skin.
12:13: You can't discriminate against someone if they're male or female. So when you go to hire someone at a job, it is illegal to basically hire someone or not hire someone based on the way they look, is the idea.
12:29: And what they want to do is add into this sexual preferences, gender preferences, things like that.
12:37: And what Budd basically had done was go through all the different areas this is going to affect.
12:43: And there are a number of areas that are going to be affected by this. And really, you put a quote in here from John MacArthur that I think really does summarize what this bill is.
12:55: Let me read that from John MacArthur, quote, we're making laws to make the insane feel normal.
13:02: Laws are being made to criminalize, criminalize righteousness, unquote. That quote,
13:09: I mean, that's a great quote to use for this because that really summarizes this bill.
13:15: Oh yeah, that's exactly what this is doing. And technically it's called a
13:22: SOGI piece of legislation, SOGI, sexual orientation, gender identity.
13:28: And you're right, what it does is amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make a subjective category like what you think your gender is or what you think your sexual orientation is.
13:41: Again, that's a very subjective thing to you. It's going to take and amend the
13:47: Civil Rights Act so that that subjective feeling is equated with something that is objectively valid, such as race or ethnicity or biologic binary gender.
14:01: So it's going to equate that. We're going to take something that is objective, amend it with something that is subjective, and that becomes a law of the land.
14:08: And it has implications all over society. And it certainly will have implications for Christians in society and the
14:16: Church as an institution. When we look at this, the one thing that I think we have to deal with, in my opinion, is what the
14:28: Scripture has. When we look at this bill, I see only one Scripture that comes to mind as we look at this, and this is
14:36: Romans chapter 1. So if we can look at Romans chapter 1, starting in verse 18,
14:43: I'm going to read a lengthy portion of this because I want folks to understand that this is what
14:51: Scripture predicted, all right? So Romans chapter 1, starting in verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.
15:15: For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His power, His eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
15:30: For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
15:44: Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible
15:51: God for an image in the form of corruptible man, and of birds, and four -footed animals, and crawling creatures.
15:59: Therefore God gave them over in their lusts and their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
16:15: For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
16:24: Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them over to a degrading passion.
16:32: For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way, also, the men abandoned the natural function of women and burned in their desire toward one another.
16:45: Men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty in their error.
16:53: And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer,
16:58: God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice.
17:17: They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.
17:30: And although they knew the ordinances of God, that those who practice such are worthy of death, they do not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to the practice of them.
17:49: That is the description of the Equality Act, Romans chapter 1, 18 to 32. That really does, this lays out for us what we see when we speak of the
17:58: Equality Act. This is people who have, they know God exists. The evidence is there that God has revealed it to them.
18:06: He's made it evident to them. They suppress that truth. And once you start suppressing truth, any error becomes true.
18:13: You'll substitute any error for it. And the thing you end up having is our country, our culture has gone this way.
18:21: And what happens? People are saying, you know, is the Equality Act, you know, is this going to bring about God's judgment?
18:28: Well, no. According to what we just read, the Equality Act is God's judgment. It's not going to bring it about.
18:34: We are already under God's judgment because God has already given over this country into the hands of wicked people that are now turning everything in where they want, as it says here, they want to give hearty approval to those who practice these evil deeds.
18:54: You know, when we look at homosexuality, it has morphed. People used to describe it, that this was a curse.
19:00: It was a sin. And that would be the biblical way of viewing this. But somewhere we've seen a change in our culture where it went from being a curse to a cross that had to be bared.
19:12: So they were bearing this cross. They couldn't help themselves. This is the way they're born, as the argument would say.
19:19: There's no way to stop it. But in the last decade or so, we've gone from it being a curse to the cross to where now they would argue it is a crown.
19:29: It is something to be celebrated. And this act is that. This act is the idea of celebrating as if they're wearing a crown of glory.
19:41: It is giving, as the scripture says, giving hearty approval to those who practice them. So as we go through this article that Bud has written,
19:50: I want to just lay this out, where we are scripturally in this, so we understand and why we see our culture doing what it does.
19:58: When you look and you read Romans there, and you read 27 to 31, you're going to be like, wow, this is really sending a whole lot of, or describing a whole lot of what our culture looks like.
20:16: This is everything that we see in culture, this whole list.
20:23: This is what a culture looks like when they give themselves over to depravity, when they suppress the truth. And so with that,
20:30: Bud, I'm going to give you, you wrote the article, and I want to kind of let you start us off with some of the key points.
20:37: There's some areas I'm going to really want to focus in on when you start taking, you talk about the impact that this is going to have.
20:46: So I want to give you, if you can give us the overview of what you've written down as far as what the act is, and then
20:53: I want to spend the remainder of our time in really the impact of it. Yeah, sure. Let's just use the language of the bill itself.
21:03: It's technically from the House, it's called House Resolution No. 5.
21:09: The short title of it is, quote, to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes.
21:19: No, wait, wait, that's the short title. That's the short title. The short title, okay. I was sending an email last night, and I was trying to figure out the subject line, and my wife gave me something like this.
21:30: I was like, the subject is supposed to be short. It's supposed to be like a few words, not a whole sentence.
21:36: So this is the short title. What's the long title? Well, the long description is this, and I will read it because I think we need to understand this.
21:44: It's in the article. I've quoted it. This comes from GovTrack .us.
21:51: It's a website that publishes the status of any kind of federal legislation that you want to look at. But here's what it describes the bill as.
21:58: It says, this bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system.
22:15: Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation.
22:26: The bill expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that, one, provide exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays, and two, goods, services, or programs, or three, transportation services.
22:45: In conclusion, it says the bill allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity.
22:58: Now, there's a key point that is omitted in this bill, which is it amends like 59 different existing federal legislations, primarily the
23:08: Civil Rights Act, because we want to make sexual orientation, gender identity equivalent to race or sexual discrimination or age, creed, national origin, those kind of things.
23:23: We want to equate that with this bill or in this bill. But what this bill does not do is very telling.
23:30: The bill does not define what sexual orientation actually means.
23:35: It leaves it incredibly subjective to the whim of the individual. But it's just a wicked act.
23:45: It's going to have implications all over. It's going to attack the First Amendment. It's going to have economic impacts.
23:52: It's going to have medical, I mean major medical impacts, not only on adults, but also children.
23:58: And that's another category that we kind of cover in the article. Women, certainly, this is a direct attack on women.
24:08: Christians who live in society, all these different categories where we live, it's going to affect that.
24:15: It's going to affect the language that you can use. It's going to affect the beliefs that you can defend. It's going to affect the behavior that you're going to be allowed or not allowed.
24:26: So very comprehensive. And I think what I noticed that you brought it out, the fact that they don't define it.
24:33: They don't define what sexual orientation is. Once this bill gets enacted, they're no longer, it becomes who gets to define it?
24:41: Because they didn't define it in the bill. So you're no longer going to be able to say polygamy is wrong. No. If my sexual orientation is with animals, you can't say that's wrong.
24:50: You know, if it's with men with little children. Well, and that's the thing.
24:55: I woke up at three o 'clock this morning thinking I've got to finish this article up. And what I woke up thinking about was what about pedophilia?
25:03: Correct. You know, are we defining that as a sexual orientation? And if so, but they have, they have because they don't call it pedophilia anymore.
25:11: You're not allowed to use that term. It is now MAPS, minor attracted people syndrome.
25:18: Yeah, right. So, so it's, I just have a minor attraction, attraction to minors. That's all.
25:24: And that's, that's the way they will argue. And without a definition, you're putting children at risk, you know, and we'll get to this with some of the implications of this.
25:31: But one of the things is now you can't define who's a male and female. So anyone, any man can go into any women's, you know, bathroom in locker rooms at gyms.
25:43: I mean, we'll get to, I know I want to get to this later, but I'll just say it now. I think one of the things is,
25:49: I mean, this is going to set back women's rights completely. You're, you're going to have women that will stop going to gyms because they're going to go into a gym with a shower and there's going to be a guy who just wants to look at the women getting undressed to go take a shower.
26:02: And you're going to tell me that some of those guys that are willing to do that are not going to be willing to, to then take the next step and rape a woman.
26:09: No, of course not. There have been cases where that's happened. I actually didn't put some of those in the article, but yeah, there have been cases where that has happened.
26:17: And this law, if it's passed into law, will protect that man because all he's got to say is,
26:23: I identify as a woman. Correct. And he is immediately legally to be allowed access to that shower or to that restroom.
26:32: This would, this would completely eradicate sex specific spaces.
26:38: Um, but, but see, because they're trying to protect a certain group of people, what ends up happening is even if a rape does occur as has happened because the, there was a case with someone who, a guy who raped a girl in a bathroom, but he identifies as a lesbian.
26:55: And so because of that, they, they protected him, the rapist, not the woman.
27:00: So I think women are going to stop going to gyms, places where they have, where there's locker rooms like that.
27:06: I think they're just going to, you know, they're not going to feel comfortable. I'm already hearing there's places where girls go to school.
27:12: They don't, they don't go into the bathroom. They try to hold it. They're trying not to drink water all day long because they don't want to go into the girl's bathroom anymore because they don't know who's going to be in there.
27:22: And it puts them in a vulnerable, you know, in between a classroom, a high school, the in between classes, not as many people are in the bathrooms.
27:28: You have some guy just sitting in the bathroom waiting for any girl to come in. You know, this is like, this is, there's a reason we separate men and women's bathrooms.
27:38: I mean, really the only solution to the bathroom thing is to have everyone have a unit stalls.
27:44: Everyone has an individual bathroom that you go in and you lock the door behind you. And it's amazing that they, the same proponents of this argue that that would be discrimination.
27:52: Like, how's that discriminating? That's not discriminating anybody. Everyone gets their own bathroom. You know, would that be an economic thing to have to change all the bathrooms?
27:59: Yes. But these companies that want to try to pass this bill and say, oh, we're going to, you know, let everyone use any bathroom they want.
28:07: Well, that's still going to cause you problems. But I think it's going to set back women's sports.
28:13: It's going to set back just women's, what they could, what they feel comfortable with on an everyday, just where they go.
28:21: Are they going to feel comfortable going shopping and going to a restroom in a store? You know, these are things they're not talking about.
28:27: And then you get into the fact that it's not defined. Now you have some guy that says, well,
28:34: I have an attraction to minors. He's going to be the one protected as he sexually abuses someone that may not be old enough to make that decision.
28:43: Yeah. And you already see some of that happening. There was just some, I couldn't believe this, the consent teaching that's going on in middle schools.
28:56: So they're teaching children now, purportedly, they're teaching them that they have the right to say no.
29:02: But the obvious inverse is they also have the right to say yes. And you've seen cases, or at least when
29:09: I was researching this, cases where you have a 14 -year -old who gives consent and a 21 -year -old has sex with her.
29:19: The parents have no rights to litigate. They can't go after the guy. It's not a criminal act.
29:25: The 14 -year -old gave consent. Well, here's why I have a problem with that.
29:30: Oh, I have a problem with it too. No, no. I'm just saying. No, but here's the thing that they don't consider in these laws, grooming.
29:37: Well, and that's what happens. You and I addressed this on Apologetics Live when we talked about Ravi Zacharias, this whole idea of the grooming process.
29:44: And I think we kind of touched on it when we covered Ravi Zacharias on our show. But the grooming is something that you get a 40 -year -old man with a 14 -year -old girl.
29:55: He can coax consent from her. You want evidence? You just look at Jeffrey Epstein.
30:01: I mean, that's what this guy did. His whole argument was that they gave consent. He paid them. He gave them money.
30:06: He made them feel that they had no other choice. Ravi Zacharias got consent from the women. There's at least a report of one woman that didn't give consent, but the others did.
30:16: So you're going to say that what was done was not wrong then? You see, this is the problem. When you say it's based on consent, you don't define things properly, or you don't give a definition at all.
30:28: Now you've just opened the floodgates to abusers to victimize. Oh, absolutely.
30:35: Absolutely. And with this, you would have legal protection, not for the parents, not for the child, but for that abuser.
30:44: I mean, I mentioned one case, which is a precedent with regards to parental rights.
30:50: You know, a 14 -year -old girl in Ohio who wanted to transition from female to male.
30:56: The parents didn't want that. They actually wanted the child to get dysphoria counseling.
31:02: The judge, however, said, no, you can't do that. The child has determined that she wants to transition to a man.
31:10: You have to provide her, you know, the hormone treatments and mastectomies, and eventually took the parents' rights away so that the 14 -year -old could pursue this.
31:20: So the agenda is extremely vigorous, both in the academic world where it's being taught in K through 12 and certainly beyond, but it's already vigorously being pursued in the legal arena.
31:35: And the protections are not going where the protections should go. But that's because it's based on the sort of subjective ideology, which has absorbed culture.
31:45: Yeah. Well, I want to get a break. Right after this break, what I'd like to do, Bud, is
31:50: I would like us to deal with the impact on this Equality Act right after this break.
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32:14: Andrew Rappaport's new book, What Do We Believe? It will help you a ton.
32:20: Get your copy at whatdowebelievebook .com.
32:26: So that is, I think, a pretty good book to get if you want to know Christian theology in a way that's easy to understand, not too difficult.
32:34: Would you agree, Bud? I would agree. I would hope so. You wrote a recommendation for it.
32:40: Yeah, I think I got something in the forward or something. Thanks. Yeah. So let's deal with the impact of the
32:47: Equality Act. Now, the first one that you mentioned here is the
32:54: First Amendment, First Amendment freedoms. You know, let's just see that every aspect of the
33:01: First Amendment is going to be affected by this. So let's read what the
33:06: First Amendment actually says, because unfortunately, Bud, many people don't actually read the Constitution and don't know the laws of our land, but, quote,
33:15: Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the people, sorry, or of the right of the people peacefully to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, unquote.
33:42: Now, every aspect of this is affected by this. I mean, let's start with the, not so much the establishing of a religion, but the prohibiting of the free speech.
33:51: This is going to prohibit the exercise of religion. This is going to require that churches must hire those who practice homosexuality, because remember, there was no, usually what you have with bills like this is you end up having a exception, a religious exemption, and this doesn't have that.
34:16: It doesn't have it for a reason. Churches are the target. Yeah, ultimately, of course, churches are the target, and this bill actually specifically excludes the
34:27: RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed in 1993, kind of to bolster the
34:35: First Amendment so that it adds strength to religious freedom, but this act specifically excludes any appeal to that in defense of an accusation that may be brought against a business or an individual for discriminating against, you know, sexual orientation or gender identity.
34:53: You can't appeal to. Now, this RFRA is exactly the act that was used in like the
34:59: Hobby Lobby case with regards to the Affordable Care Act and the contraception mandate.
35:05: They argued this before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court upheld it on the basis of an appeal to the
35:11: RFRA, but this Equality Act specifically excludes. It says you cannot appeal to RFRA for violations of the act.
35:22: Unbelievable. And when you think about it, so religion is going to be affected by this because they're going to force churches to be celebrating homosexuality, which we could argue if we look at this that I think
35:36: I can start to make an argument that some of their views are the establishing of a religion that everyone must believe, a religion of human secularism, but freedom of speech is going to be affected.
35:48: We're not going to have the freedom to say that homosexuality is a sin. Something that has been held to be known as true for 6 ,000 years is now going to be illegal, which also, by the way, folks, will make illegal every
36:03: Bible you own. They'll be illegal under this bill. So your freedom of speech, freedom of press, well, the press will not be allowed to report on anything that will be against homosexuality or,
36:17: I mean, you're not going to be able to get to be able to report any of these things that would be against this whole movement.
36:26: No. And you've already seen that. The book, and I referenced it in the article with Amazon that, what was the title of the book?
36:35: When Harry Became Sally. And Amazon removed it. It's a conservative view, a look at the transgender movement.
36:43: It's a response to the transgender movement. Yeah. And Amazon, they took it.
36:49: They said the removal was based on the fact that they will not sell any books that, quote, that frame the
36:56: LGBTQ plus identity as mental illness. Which is what it's been held as for years, especially the transgenderism has been held that way.
37:07: And now it would be illegal to be able to report on that. So the press is going to be affected. You know, you look at each one of these things and it is going to have a massive impact on the first amendment.
37:19: It's going to be completely restrictive, especially for the church. We'll get to that in more detail of how, but you're going to see that it's going to have an economic impact.
37:30: Okay. Let me read a quote from that you have here from the Foundation. Quote, the
37:35: Equality Act would force employers and workers to conform to new sexual norms or lose their businesses and jobs.
37:46: Unquote. Okay. The Alliance for Defending Freedom states that, quote, government officials have repeatedly used local and state
37:55: SOGI laws to target and punish small business owners, unquote.
38:01: So this is where, you know, I've said this for years and people are just now starting to realize it.
38:07: But when Barack Obama said he wanted to fundamentally change America, people assumed he wanted to try to make it more socialist.
38:14: And he did. He did. And he does. But he knew he couldn't get there that quick. What he did was he spent his time focusing on the big tech companies, the major companies, and getting them to push his
38:28: CRT programs in their businesses to force that. And he subsidized them because this is the whole thing.
38:36: You're going to lose money when businesses start going political, they lose money. So, okay, we're going to give you money.
38:41: We're going to find ways to support you in your pushing of our agenda.
38:47: And once the businesses started doing it, now they feel they got this moral right that they have to do it.
38:53: But all the smaller businesses start to feel that pressure because all the bigger businesses are forcing it.
38:58: And now anyone that's conservative goes to work and they're afraid to say anything about what they do.
39:04: My counsel, I was talking with someone last night who came over, and one of the things he was struggling with or we were talking about was just this whole thing of how do you share your
39:15: Christian values at work? Even less, how do you share your conservative values?
39:22: As a Christian, you want to speak about Christianity. If you're conservative, you want to talk about the way you view things when you're sitting at a water cooler.
39:31: And I said, you know, when I worked in the secular field, I would go and I would—everyone
39:37: I worked with I would take to lunch. If I'm buying lunch, I can usually talk about anything I want. So I would meet with everyone and I'd buy lunch and share the gospel.
39:45: I never did it on work time, but everybody I knew knew I was a Christian, knew
39:50: I cared for the soul, and if they come to me, I'd say, hey, after work, let's talk.
39:56: Never do it on work time. But the thing is that what I would do is make known that I'm a
40:01: Christian. However, what I used to do early in my career, I don't do anymore. I used to play softball with the guys that I worked with.
40:09: I used to do a lot of—I used to get together with people that I worked with. Nowadays, I would tell people, maybe not—I mean, you can build the relationships outside of work is good for the gospel sake, but the thing is it now is becoming where you almost have to separate what you do in work because anyone can rat you out and you're going to lose your job.
40:31: That's the impact that it now has. People are afraid. I thought it was interesting when
40:37: Barack Obama was president. I don't know if you ever saw this, Bud, you know, maybe at your work or in public like I saw, but I'd watch people that would talk, even when
40:47: I was in a park, public park, talking to someone, and when they were talking about Obama and disagreeing with him, unknowingly, they quieted their voice.
40:55: They're like, well, I don't agree with him. And I actually asked this guy in the park, I'm like, why do you do that? And he didn't even realize he was doing it, but he does it because when he goes to work, he doesn't want anyone to overhear that he disagrees with liberals.
41:06: So he's got to be in a hushed voice. This is what ends up happening. This is the economic impact because everyone's going to be afraid to lose their job.
41:15: And what's going to happen in this current cancel culture is that people are going to be looking who they can cancel.
41:21: Now it's going to be an easy way if you want someone else's job and they happen to be conservative, all you have to do is blow the whistle.
41:31: Hey, he's against homosexuality and you could be fired and they get your job. You know, there's going to be huge impacts besides the fact that there's fines for doing this.
41:42: Yeah. Yeah. There are civil and potentially criminal implications of violating this act.
41:50: But something like you're talking about, even something as simple as using the wrong pronoun, if someone finds that to be an offensive action, whether you intended or refused to comply, they could claim you're, you know, it's a hostile work environment and that employer is going to get sued.
42:13: And there's people who can change their gender in the middle of the day and you have to just know it. Yeah. Yeah. There's a person, a woman who went to work in the morning.
42:22: She was a woman in the afternoon. She was a man every day, but she didn't tell anybody. And she got upset when someone called her a woman in the afternoon.
42:30: Like they should just know which one she is at that moment. You know, I, for years, bud, for years in New York City, where you would do a lot of open air evangelism, you, there was, there was a, you know, they changed the law.
42:43: If you use the wrong pronoun, it's like a quarter of a million dollar fine for using the wrong pronoun for someone. And I would get when doing open air, because you see someone in, you know,
42:51: I always teach to be polite and respectful. So if I see someone that is, that looks like a man, obviously looks like a man,
43:00: I'm going to refer, sir. And obviously it looks like a woman, ma 'am, that that's just being polite in my mind,
43:07: I guess not in everyone's. And I, you know, I've always had, I've had people, you know, I had a guy once, and he said, well,
43:13: I, you know, I'm a girl, you call me her. Now, there's a couple different ways of dealing with that. You know, there's debate, do you respect that person, especially when they're demanding like that?
43:22: Well, I've had a simple policy for years now. I tell people when they, you know, listen with this gentleman, he said,
43:29: I'm a her, you call me she, I said, and my, my pronoun is your majesty.
43:36: And don't forget to bow when you say it. And it's amazing because they always say, I'm not calling you that.
43:41: Okay, well, then if you're not going to refer to me by my pronoun, I'm not going to refer to you by your pronoun. And I've had something for years, but I've never been able to use this.
43:48: But I set this up just in case someone challenges me. So I have this, let's see. Hey, Siri, who am
43:54: I? You're Andrew, but you asked me to call your majesty. So I have had my phone set up like that for a long time, just so that when the person says that that's not really my pronoun, you know,
44:07: I will admit, I had a friend of mine who did this, and the person actually was bowing and saying your majesty, and like the flowing bow, which is great if you're trying to get and get a crowd, you know, they were just so then the person was like, okay,
44:22: I have to call him her. Okay, I am never gonna curtsy to you just so you know, okay.
44:31: But you see how this goes. I mean, it just becomes crazy. Let's look at the medical. This one is really interesting.
44:37: And there was a case where someone died in a hospital, they the person came in and said he was a man and he had stomach pains.
44:45: It was a woman that was pregnant. And because they he said he was a man, they never checked what what they ended up saying would have been obvious if they knew it was a woman.
44:54: But men can't be pregnant. And therefore, they try treating that way.
44:59: You have a huge problem here when it comes to children that are going to say, well,
45:05: I think I'm a boy when they're really a girl or vice versa. You know, these children that we can't trust to give
45:12: Advil in in school, we can't trust them to drink, we can't trust them to vote.
45:18: We can't trust them to drive a car. But at six years old, they know whether they're male or female, and what like their gender and all this for the rest of life.
45:28: They don't even understand. They don't even understand puberty. And yet they understand what what what, you know, sex they are.
45:35: Yeah, it's, it's crazy to think about. And but this is you're have under this, you're going to have schools that are going to have to not tell the parents and this is already the case in some places, where you can't tell the parents.
45:50: And the teacher is going to go off and take them like they do with abortions, take them off to have, you know, sex change operations and not tell the parents, you're going to see that this is the government saying no, we're going to we're going to raise your children, there's going to be irreparable damage, as children go through mutilation of their bodies, that will will sterilize them for life.
46:11: There's report after report after report of people who are who have recognized as adults, and they're going, wait, you know,
46:18: I was, I think you refer to one in there about some some people older in life, and that they ended up, you know, really, like, this is, this is not the case that we, you basically, they end up like, there's one case
46:31: I'm thinking of, I don't know if it was in your article now, I'm trying to remember, that where an adult is suing his own parents for raising him as a girl.
46:40: So, you know, the children are being groomed as well. In every one of these cases with these kids, there's something that you end up seeing with grooming, whether it's the parents or someone else, but this is going to encourage more of that.
46:54: Yeah, actually, one of the things I'm just kind of scrolling through this far too lengthy article, but one opponent of the bill has said that the schools will be encouraged or mandated to instruct first, second, and third graders that they can choose to be a boy or a girl or neither or both.
47:13: This is indoctrination. It's what one called institutionalized child abuse, and it's all subjective, but it's politicizing medicine.
47:24: Doctors would not be able to use their best medical judgment nor the implications of their conscience to refuse to provide transition therapies, hormonal therapies, mastectomies,
47:39: I mean, just the gamut of things that must happen if someone wants to do that from any age that they're required to.
47:47: There's another implication related to abortion, which is really detailed.
47:52: We won't get into that, but one observer of this act said that it's a
47:58: Trojan horse for federally funded abortions because that's redefined as a sex -related issue.
48:07: A doctor could not refuse to perform one, and the government would finance that, but a lot of implications medically with the issue of dysphoria.
48:21: You cannot counsel against a child's presumed dysphoria. Well, you've been indoctrinating them in the third grade that they can be a boy if they're a girl or a girl if they're a boy, or they can be both or one of 71 other genders that they may choose.
48:36: You've been indoctrinating them, so they're confused. They hit puberty.
48:41: They have the obvious difficulties that go on with that just naturally, and you're allowed to counsel them so that they are comfortable with their biologic, scientific,
48:53: DNA -based gender. You have to counsel them to pursue the implications of their dysphoria.
49:01: And that gets us right into the education as well, because this is going to be forced at the youngest grades.
49:08: This is going to be forced into our views of what children are going to be taught.
49:15: This is going to be something that you're going to see a whole new line of curriculum that are going to come out.
49:23: You're going to see a whole line of thinking that they're going to try to use to indoctrinate the next generation, and then once you see that, they're going to normalize this, and anyone that believes what the
49:36: Bible teaches is automatically, if you haven't seen it already, we're already hated, it's going to be even more.
49:42: There's going to be even more of this, because what you have in Nazi Germany, and I think that Gina Carano got in trouble for doing this, or for saying this, is that what you had in Nazi Germany was the accepting of hatred of a group of people.
50:02: And once you have that, once you allow the hatred of a group of people, and right now that group of people is specifically
50:10: Christians, but it's dealing with conservatives overall, once you have acceptance of that, then you feel justified in whatever you do to them, including killing them, putting them into prisons and killing them.
50:23: And so the education is to reinforce that, and you're going to have widespread hatred for Christian values.
50:31: But what does get me, what scared me in your article was the last paragraph under there, as it will require throughout society, the
50:39: Equality Act will require the, quote, all same -sex spaces, unquote, to be, quote, open to both sexes, unquote.
50:49: So basically there's not going to be any, like, there's going to be nowhere you can go where, you know, think about it as a woman, there's nowhere you can go where a guy won't be able to walk in on you.
50:59: That should scare people. The other category here is, you know, the last, well, last three that you have,
51:10: I think, are the most important, and we've kind of covered them a little. So women, children, Christian.
51:15: Let's start with the women. I've kind of already said what I think with where this is going to go as far as children.
51:23: I think that this is going to be extremely dangerous, and this is going to damage women's rights, women's sports.
51:34: We're already seeing that. There's, you know, there's going to be a setback for all that women have been doing to fight for equality, and you're going to see,
51:45: I believe, as you mentioned in your article in the high school in Pennsylvania, where boys can, you know, identify as girls, go into the girls' locker rooms, you know, in Georgia, where you had a male that, you know, used his gender fluidness to go into the girls' restrooms, and assault of a five -year -old girl.
52:05: Now, and the reason that has occurred, there are 23 states that have state legislation for sexual orientation, gender identity.
52:15: So this is a federal piece of legislation we're looking at that would overwrite all of that, but you've got states now, and some of these instances that I've cited are from states that have those laws already on their books.
52:32: Children is the next one. We've kind of covered this as well, and where the impact it's going to have on children, I think, is going to be the most damaging, because what are they doing?
52:41: They're focusing on trying to push a whole generation of people, of children, to believe that opposite their
52:49: DNA, opposite their biology. Bud, we're supposed to follow the science.
52:55: Boys are boys, girls are girls. No, no, no, that's only with COVID. That is not.
53:01: Yeah, that's not. We follow the science when we want to follow the science. When it fits the agenda.
53:06: Ah, when it's convenient. You've got an ideology here. Yes. Listen, the big area of,
53:12: I mean, the impact on children is just widespread, but two places in particular, adoption agencies and foster parenting, particularly if they are faith -based operations, and we've already seen within the last couple of weeks,
53:26: Bethany Adoption Services. Yes. Fold. They are now going to place children with same -sex parents.
53:35: Okay, that's not Christian, but the compromise is already there.
53:41: I looked at foster parenting, just to kind of get an idea of what that is. There are 424 ,000, give or take, children in need of foster parents now.
53:51: The law passes. Gender fluid, homosexual, lesbian, or whatever, would be protected.
54:00: You could not discriminate from placing a child with them on the basis of their orientation or their identity.
54:07: So what's that going to mean? Well, that's going to mean that those agencies that might hold to their convictions and refuse to do that, they're going to lose the federal funding that all these foster programs provide.
54:18: They're all tied to federal funding in one way or another. So they're going to shut down. Well, what's that going to mean?
54:24: That's going to mean 424 ,000 may become 848 ,000. You're going to see a massive explosion in the needs of children.
54:35: They're not being satisfied now. So foster parenting and adoption agencies, major implications from this.
54:44: And let's get to the last one. This is the most concerning for us as Christians. This is really where I believe the target is.
54:51: You say in your article, the Equality Act considers Christian ethics as hatred and bigotry, which does kind of crack me up because I guess they don't know what the word irony means.
55:02: Right. I mean, when they lump a whole group of people in as bigots, that's actually bigotry.
55:11: That's the very definition of bigotry. There you go. You know, so, you know, when you consider the impact as with all the other areas we've already covered, their goal, their focus is on Christianity.
55:26: It's going to be, you say, to make Christians second -class citizens. It is going to be to make
55:32: Christians much like what happened in Nazi Germany with the Jewish people. It is to make them, to isolate them, to blame them.
55:40: And because here's the thing, what someone gets in power with, they stay in power with. Hitler got into power by using the
55:48: Jewish people as a scapegoat. But the only way he can remain in power is to keep that going.
55:53: Well, you have people that have used LGBT to get into office, pushing these things to get into office.
56:01: They cannot now say, okay, now that we're in office, we could drop this and start using common sense.
56:07: They can't do that. They have to keep this going. So the attack on Christianity is only getting started, folks.
56:14: It's only getting started. They're going to use this bill to make us second -class citizens.
56:20: We'll become less than human. Therefore, we could be killed. We could be enslaved. We could be whatever they want because we don't respect other people, which to any critically thinking human being that has a brain and a pulse realizes when you say that they're not worth because they don't agree with us, obviously, then you're doing the very thing you're condemning.
56:44: You're saying, well, they don't respect other people, so we have the right to treat them this way. But you're not treating the
56:50: Christians as any other human being. You're not tolerant. Yeah, yeah.
56:55: Well, you know, that's just the ironic paradoxical lunacy of this sort of post -modern era that we're in, and this kind of nonsense really shows it.
57:07: But tolerance, I mean, tolerance is not a virtue, but it is to this culture, but it's an ideological tolerance.
57:13: It is not what the word would naturally mean to most people.
57:20: Well, they've redefined it. Tolerance is the virtue of a man with no convictions. I mean, that's what tolerance is.
57:26: They've changed the definition of tolerance. Tolerance properly defined is that I will accept your point, like you and I may differ, but I'm not going to treat you differently based on that.
57:38: I'm going to accept our differences. But they sit there, when they talk tolerance, you will accept our point of view.
57:45: It's the exact opposite of what tolerance actually is. They have switched the word bigotry with tolerance.
57:52: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And this act provides federal protection and the force of law to demand your compliance.
58:01: You put in your article an excerpt from the Equality Act where it comes to public accommodations.
58:08: Can you just go over that so people understand how this is going to affect
58:14: Christians because they don't have a religious exemption in this? Yeah, well, the religious exemption has been extracted.
58:22: It's specifically written out by the law or by the act. One of the issues is with regards to how it redefines public accommodations that was already defined in the
58:35: Civil Rights Act. And so I've included that excerpt there to show you how it is changing that.
58:42: Now, what opponents have said is that the act redefines public accommodations so broadly that the only place that would not be included would be private homes.
58:55: So does that mean churches? Now, the act doesn't specifically mention churches. The implication that these opponents to the bill,
59:03: I think, rightly have is that it would designate churches, schools, health care, anything as public accommodations.
59:12: And if it is defined, if the church, the facility is defined as a public accommodation, this law is intact and in place and must be abided by.
59:24: Now, in your article, you talk about what about pedophilia. You talk about, you know, you have a whole thing on the
59:31: Paycheck Protection Program. Lots of interesting things there. Let me finalize this today, and I encourage people to go to the article.
59:39: It's linked in the show notes, or go to strivingforeturning .org, The Equality Act, A Christian Overview.
59:45: I want to end with the summary you have of the potential impact to churches and Christians from the
59:50: Liberty Council. So you have something from the Liberty Council, which is a religious liberty organization, legal organization.
59:59: So they have on their website this. It gives several bullet points for churches and Christians.
01:00:08: The impact of this is that churches will be forced to host same -sex ceremonies. Churches will lose tax -exempt status for non -compliance.
01:00:17: Colleges will lose accreditation for non -compliance. Non -compliant colleges will be illegible to receive student loans, causing most religious schools to compromise on their core mission or close.
01:00:33: If churches or religious organizations take overnight trips, including sports or missions trips, they cannot segregate rooms by biological gender.
01:00:43: Biological men will have access to bathrooms, showers, and nursing mother rooms at any time, and stay as long as they please.
01:00:54: Churches will be forced to hire staff, including or involving in LGBT contact, even positions of authority in affiliated daycare classes and give them complete access to all children in restrooms.
01:01:10: Cross -dressers could demand that they be greeters, ushers, Sunday school teachers, and more.
01:01:17: Even the smallest slight would give someone the legal right to sue the church. For example, if a person assumes they were turned down for a staff position because of an
01:01:27: LGBT lifestyle, they could sue the church for damages, even if that was not the reason they were denied for the job.
01:01:36: So these are several bullet points that you end up seeing, and the one to think about is you have someone who says they're pedophilia, what we would call pedophilia, what they would call minor attraction person, they just have an attraction to minors, and they come into your church, and they say,
01:01:54: I want to serve in nursery, or I want to serve in the children's program, and you think about, with the churches, how many things we have set up to protect the children.
01:02:05: We have to do, in my state, in Pennsylvania, you have to have background checks done, you have to have a minimum of two people with the children, right?
01:02:14: So you have all this, and yet once this bill goes into effect, you have someone that has an attraction to children, and you can't deny him serving in nursery or children's program by this law.
01:02:29: In fact, he would be the one protected, not your child. Yeah, precisely, and that is because, although the act does not specifically state anything regarding pedophilia, what we would call pedophilia, by virtue of the fact that it does not define what sexual orientation is, this opens the door, and there is a lot of data out there and a lot of analysis on how it opens the door for that, because you're going to have a protected predator, a legally protected predator, who could demand access, and if the church is being redefined potentially, and the act doesn't do this, but it is interpreted as possibly doing this, if the church is identified as a public accommodation, then your hands are tied by what this act requires you to comply with.
01:03:19: You don't have the basis to discriminate. It's unbelievable.
01:03:24: There is a ministerial exclusion, but that really, although it has been vigorously defended in the courts, that really only has to do with the church hiring a pastor.
01:03:35: You can kind of overlook any sort of discrimination laws that are in place because you're hiring a minister, but every other
01:03:43: Sunday school, ushers, band members, think of, you know, megachurches with all the categories of employees they've got.
01:03:52: This would affect that. Yeah, but where I think it's the most dangerous is that, you know, we already have problems that, you know, those who practice pedophilia, sexual predators, they tend to go to churches anyway, because,
01:04:06: A, churches are places where people are going to be more trusting of them. It makes it easy for them to prey on the people they want to abuse, and now this law would actually protect them as the victimizers, the abusers, protect them over our congregation.
01:04:21: So, but I'm going to ask you to close out with the last paragraph of your article. You have a quote there, and I think that that would be a good way to end if you want to just read that last paragraph.
01:04:33: Yeah, this is from Dr. Owen Strand, who also did his own podcast on it on The City of God, but he says, quote, "...too
01:04:42: many Christians are sitting on their hands or are scared or understandably are wondering when they should pick the moment to speak up and stand up for the truth.
01:04:54: Friends, please hear me," he says, "...with all Christian charity. Now is the time to do this.
01:05:01: The hour is drawing very late in this society, in this republic. If you have the ability to speak up, if you still have that freedom, you should use it."
01:05:11: And I think that's an appropriate way for us to end. You know what, bud? What's that? That's a wrap.
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01:06:25: That was really funny. I woke you up, though. We do too many podcasts.
01:06:32: I should have left that in. You should leave that in, yeah. Rutgers Health takes an integrated approach to educating students, providing clinical care for our communities, and conducting innovative research to create life -changing health for all.
01:06:47: As New Jersey's academic health center, Rutgers Health brings discoveries in the lab directly to patients across the state and around the world.
01:06:55: Our eight schools, Behavioral Health Network, and four centers and institutes are located just outside New York City in Newark and New Brunswick.
01:07:04: Together, we're breathing new life into health. Here in Key West, we were out before it was in.
01:07:12: In this open and inclusive paradise, you can be yourself, make new friends, and savor our live and let live vibe.
01:07:20: With LGBTQ plus friendly accommodations, our legendary nightlife, and year -round activities and events, it's always a good time to come as you are.