The Equality Act Makes Everyone Potato Heads

“To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man,” says Wisdom personified in Proverbs 8. “O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense… Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death.”

Let me take you back to a pair of stories that hit the news a week ago. Bit by the gender neutrality bug, the toy company Hasbro announced that they were dropping the “Mr.” from their iconic toy “Mr. Potato Head.” It would be rebranded as simply “Potato Head.”

Later that same day, a more serious headline broke forth. The House of Representatives voted to pass the deceptively-named Equality Act, said to be a bill that would ban discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity. Every single Democrat voted for it, along with three Republicans. It now goes to the Senate for debate.

Keep in mind, this is the same Democrat-controlled House who, at the start of the year, proposed new House rules that would neutralize any reference to gender—not just his and hers pronouns, but also man, woman, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, Mr. and Mrs., etc. So of course they want to impose this on the rest of America.

If the Democrats get their way, and the Equality Act passes, everyone will be rebranded as simply “Potato Head.”

Joking aside, the Equality Act is evil, hateful legislation that regards madness as wisdom and wisdom as madness. The bill threatens life and equality discriminating against men, women, and children (including the unborn), destroying religious freedom and infringing upon privacy rights—all for the sake of sexual fantasy and perversion. All who love this bill hate wisdom and love death.

The Ethics of the Equality Act

One of the most basic and fundamental truths about who you are is found in the first chapter of the Bible: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). This is not up for debate. It is a matter of biblical truth and common sense. You are male or you are female—end of discussion.

Ever since the fall of man two chapters later, mankind has been in rebellion against God, even against the laws of nature God has set in place. It is utter foolishness to think that we, mere creatures, can overthrow the Creator or break His laws without consequences. But as the Apostle Paul wrote, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools,” and, “God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:22, 28).

Enter the Equality Act. According to Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR, “The Equality Act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to explicitly prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” Oh, but it would do so much more than this. To begin scrutinizing this awful law, just consider that the very concepts of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” go against natural law.

Regarding sexual orientation, section 1101 of the Equality Act defines it as, “homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.” In other words a person may be attracted to the same sex, the opposite sex, or both. But while opposite-sex attraction is a natural desire, same-sex attraction is not. If every person were inclined to have same-sex intercourse, the human race would end.

As same-sex attraction is not a natural desire, it is not an immutible desire. There is no such thing as a “gay gene.” No one is born desiring lesbian, gay, or bi-sexual acts (the L, G, and B in the acrostic LGBTQ), and we know a person’s desires can change. But the Equality Act puts LGBTQ people into a natural class of persons (section 2, paragraph 3), despite the fact that sexual orientation is a matter of personal preference.

Regarding gender identity, section 1101 of the Equality Act defines it as “the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.”

“Gender-related” is quite broad. What is not in the definition of gender identity? Any reference to male or female. The terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” occur more than 70 times in the Equality Act. The word “women” appears five times, and it’s always in regards to discrimination, not as a descriptor. The words man, men, male, or female do not appear at all. So sexual orientation and gender identity are being defined without any reference to sex or gender. That is an astonishing level of confusion and foolishness.

The sexual revolution has declared that being a man or a woman is a figment of your imagination, a social construct shaped more by culture than by nature. But a man wanting to have sex with men or a man wanting to become a woman are real sexual identities, absolutely not influenced by a carnal culture’s descent into madness. The political Left are just making stuff up as they go, and if you’re not with them, you’re the one who rejects science.

The Equality Act denies common sense fundamentals of humanity. Your “designated sex at birth” is a fiction, according to this law. All things considered, your sex was not determined at birth. Whether you would be male or female was determined at your conception—which, need I remind you, was the result of sexual intercourse between a male and a female. Every single cell in your body contains the genetic code for either a man or a woman.

Long after you’re gone, if someone were to go to your grave and exume your remains, they would be able to tell, either from leftover genetic material or your skeletal structure, if you were a man or a woman. No one would even think to ask your opinion—one, you’re dead; and two, your opinion wouldn’t matter. Anyone with any sound moral reasoning knows there are only two options—you are either male or female, and your sex never changes.

We all inherently know this, but wicked people “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). A term like “trans woman” is an admission that person is “not a woman.” If a man could actually become a woman, we would just call him a woman, not a “trans woman.” That “trans” descriptor is self-defeating. Yet under the Equality Act, people will be fined, fired, possibly even incarcerated for calling a “trans woman” what he really is—a mentally ill man.

These are diseased minds. It is unloving to let a person think this way. But the Equality Act not only approves of it, they want to infect children with it. This stuff destroys people. It damages their brains as well as their bodies. It makes people think of one another as little more than sex dolls and children more like frou-frou dogs rather than human beings. The only cure for this madness is the gospel of Jesus Christ, who made us in His image, which this law wants to destroy.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are matters of preference, not matters of fact. If you identify as a sex or gender other than what was scripted in your DNA at conception, you are going against nature and common sense, and you are writing your own fantasy. Anyone who does not want to cosplay along with the fantasy will be breaking the law under the Equality Act.

The Effects of the Equality Act

The Equality Act is the greatest threat to religious liberty in American history. The bill explicitly states in a single sentence that it trumps the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (section 1107). Do the Bill of Rights matter at all to those who wrote or favor the Equality Act? Freedoms of speech and religion are actually in the Constitution, while sexual orientation and gender identity are not.

Under the Equality Act, you could not, say, own a cake shop and refuse to bake a “transition” cake for a man who wants to celebrate that he’s becoming a woman. If you are a photographer, you could not refuse to take pictures for a gay wedding. If you are a doctor, you could not as a matter of conscience refuse to perform an abortion or castrate a boy who identifies as a girl.

Yes, you read that right—the Equality Act will force Christian doctors and faith-based hospitals to kill living, moving, kicking, feeling babies, or they cannot practice medicine. They will be required to do sex-change surgeries (though such a thing is not even possible). Many of these procedures, like mutilating a boy’s sexual organs or giving girls testosterone, are irreversible or have life-long consequences. Some of these procedures will be performed on children.

If you are a business owner, you would not be allowed to fire one of your employees because he started dressing like a woman and using women’s bathrooms and asking male co-workers out on dates. You cannot fire a woman because you found out she’s been sleeping around, got pregnant, and had an abortion. You cannot call any of this unacceptable behavior for your employees.

If a man identifies as a woman, he must be allowed to use the women’s locker room or bathroom of his choice. He must be permitted to compete in women’s sports, which would bring an end to women’s sports as we know it. All of the records will be held by mentally ill men who think they’re women.

There will no longer be any “women only” spaces. Shelters for women who have been abused will be required to include men who call themselves women. A man in prison who declares he is a woman will be housed in a prison for women.

Calling a person by the wrong preferred pronouns will be a punishable offense, as it already is in some places. You will not be allowed to tell LGBTQ persons that they are in sin worthy of the judgment of God, and that by faith in Christ they will be saved. Even if a man is convicted of his sexual perversion and wants to change, if someone reports you saying that Jesus will change him, that will be categorized as “conversion therapy,” which is illegal under the Equality Act.

It is bad enough that Christians will not be allowed to have Christian convictions in secular jobs or in public spaces. But do not think that churches and religious institutions will be exempt. We might be able to enjoy our first amendment protections at first, but they will not last. The long, slimy tentacles of the Equality Act will come for your speech and your beliefs, your business and your school, and eventually your church and your family.

I can think of a host of other scenarios that will be declared criminal under the Equality Act. But the scariest are the scenarios I cannot think of. Romans 1:30 says that those whom God has given over to their own depravity become “inventors of evil.” We’ve seen only a fraction of the evils the Left will perpetuate with the Equality Act.

The Evils of the Equality Act

So what can be done about this? Honestly, not much. Absent a massive public outcry, there’s little chance the Equality Act won’t pass. It has already passed the House and the Democrats have the edge in the Senate. As my pastor said on Sunday, the very fact that it passed one chamber of Congress is already a judgment from God. The time to speak up was last year before the election, but many conservatives did not say anything because they hated Donald Trump more than they hated bills like this.

Congratulations, Never Trumpers, Evangelicals for Biden, and anyone else who over the last few years either explicitly or implicitly condemned a vote for Trump. You got what you wanted, and the mean Orange Man is out of the White House. And for what? Now your daughters will be sharing women’s spaces with mentally ill perverse men, our tax dollars will pay for abortions, and the persecution of the church will increase. Was it worth the exchange?

This is another reason I believe the Equality Act will pass—many religious conservatives are either not aware of the danger or they don’t care. Little warning has gone forth because our leaders and teachers have not been sounding the alarm. Many professing Christians have already been sucked into the lies of the LGBTQ movement—probably more than we might be aware, though we might be about to find out.

News went public this week that Bethany Christian Services, the largest nominally Christian adoption agency in the country, will be placing children with LGBTQ parents for foster care and adoption. When Christianity Today ran the story, they were sure to include a happy, pleasing stock photo of two affectionate men, one holding the hand of a little girl and the other pushing a twin stroller. When the New York Times ran the story, they used a picture of the adoption agency. Christianity Today went more LGBTQ-friendly with their imagery than the Times.

Recently, Max Lucado, named America’s Pastor by Christianity Today, apologized for calling same-sex “marriage” a sin, and he had a past article he wrote on the subject scrubbed from Crosswalk. The President of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greear, has called for “pronoun hospitality,” and has preached from Romans 1 that the Bible “appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin.” Be sure that if the Equality Act passes, lots more capitulating will come.

Add to all of this the fact that many evangelicals have not been attending church for a year and are being tossed to and fro by every shifting “wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14). The government said don’t go, and they listened to the government. Many influential preachers closed their churches—Greear and Andy Stanley among them—and many professing Christians followed their lead. Is this a kind of providential foreshadowing as to what American churches are about to do under the Equality Act, bowing to the government’s demands?

Christian, you have got to be brave. Start by going to church. Be ready to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness (Matthew 5:10). Do not be so confident to think that you would be willing to die for Jesus if you are not willing to go to church for Jesus.

You must speak the truth. You cannot call a man a woman and go along with the lie. You cannot pretend two gay men, two lesbian women, or a “throuple” is a family in the eyes of God, let alone that God would say this is good for children. This cannot be accepted in your church, nor can you bend to the culture or bow to the government and talk in public like they want you to talk. Jesus says they will hate you because they hate Him (John 8:43, 10:26, 15:18). Don’t try to satisfy the world to soften the blow lest you surrender the truth.

You must be diligent to raise up your family in the knowledge of God and His word. Husbands, love your wives. Wives, submit to your husbands. Children, obey your parents in the Lord of this is right. Fathers, train up your children in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord, and do not be harsh with them. If you do not teach your kids, there is an enemy who is more than willing to do it for you.

It may very well be that God has sent this nation “a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:12). I do pray, as we all should, that the Lord would be merciful, that the gospel penetrates sinful hearts, and many would come to repentance and faith in Christ before the day of judgment comes upon them. God has given the gospel to the church. It is your duty to proclaim it until the end.

In Conclusion

There is such a thing as common sense, and the Bible talks about it. To gain wisdom or “learn sense,” as Proverbs 8:5 instructs, is to know how to apply sound judgment in practical matters. Not everyone will be an intellectual or a scholar, but we are instructed by God to be reasonable. “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone, the Lord is at hand,” as it says in Philippians 4:5. Without the wisdom of God, we’re all potato heads!

When a person turns from their sin to the righteousness of God in Christ, they have exchanged foolishness for wisdom. A seared conscience is healed, and a clear conscience is put in its place. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

No matter the depth of a man’s depravity, God is able to rescue. No matter what happens, keep proclaiming Jesus Christ and Him crucified for our sins. Only He can save us.