Last week, the House narrowly passed the so-called “Equality Act.” It’s a typical “progressive” bill in that it has an innocuous name that nobody could argue with hiding its toxic contents.

The bill enshrines sexual and gender identities as protected classes on the level of race and actual gender and eviscerates the 1992 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and religious freedom protections of the First Amendment. It specifically states that if a religious organization doesn’t bend its sacred beliefs to the LGBTQ agenda, it can be sued for discrimination and the RFRA will not provide legal protection. It redefines “public accommodation” to include churches, religious homeless shelters, adoption agencies and other faith-based organizations.

It would force doctors to violate their Hippocratic Oaths by performing abortions and providing hormones and surgery to people who want to alter their genders, even if they think it’s harmful to the patient’s health. It also would codify forcing everyone to treat biological males who “identify” as women as women, which could put an end to girls’ and women’s sports, end privacy for women in intimate places such as locker rooms, and force shelters for traumatized women to accept men who claim to identify as women.

The bill was passed by the House with no committee hearings, and during the debate, even though some Democrat leaders claimed it included no hostile infringement on religious liberties, Illinois Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley gave away their real feelings by declaring that the Republicans’ religious freedom arguments were just “transphobia,” “homophobia,” and “hate.”

This now goes to the Senate, where it will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Let’s hope all the Republicans and maybe a few Democrats care about the Constitution and the rights of women and people of faith, and reject it. If they actually pass it and Biden signs it, we’d be facing a long court battle to have the Supreme Court throw it out as unconstitutional. I’m not an attorney, but it seems to me that any law that has to include a paragraph saying in effect, “No fair citing the First Amendment” is pretty much the definition of unconstitutional.

And just so you know, these are the three House Republicans who joined with Democrats in voting to pass the “Equality” Act: Reps. Tom Reed and John Katko (both of NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA.)