PERRY: Equality Act is a chance to make equality mean it and stop abusing the LGTBQ

Not everyone has gotten past their homophobia.

Almost six years beyond the Supreme Court’s historic 2015 ruling spelling out same-sex marriage rights, bigots persist.

Alive and well is not just anti-gay sentiment but a blatant push to create legal sanctions against LGBTQ Americans. That’s even after a far more conservative Supreme Court ruled last year that employers can’t discriminate against gay and transgender workers and applicants.

It seems for the high court, equal does mean equal. For too many in Congress, not so much.

Despite almost 70 percent of Americans now backing the rights of gay and lesbian  Americans to marry, noisy homophobes grab headlines and make waves under the guise of religion and freedom, just like generations of bigots and racists did that came before them.

Trying to rally support for their bigotry, congressional leaders like Colorado Congressperson Lauren Boebert, Rifle, makes repeated snarky remarks about how supporters of the rights of transgender Americans hate women. She and other homophobes keep peddling a non-story about transgender women stealing athletic scholarships and glory from other women, because of what they see as a hormonal physical advantage.

“President Trump is right, biological males are competing in and destroying women’s sports,” she said in a Feb. 28 tweet. “How is this even a debate?”

It’s not. In asking Sentinel Sports Editor Courtney Oakes about how controversial trans athletes are, he said either there aren’t any in the region right now, or nobody cares.

Some extremists masking as conservatives care.

“The country is struggling with a pandemic and President Biden is focused on helping biological men compete in women’s sports,” tweeted Colorado Congressperson Ken Buck. R-Fort Collins.

Yawn. It’s sadly amusing that even those who say white supremacy is at least distasteful, hetero-supremecy is fine, just fine.

It’s only the latest version of transphobia. A couple of years ago, the faux-scandal was threats of boys pretending to be girls so they could sneak into locker rooms.

Ask school officials. Not a thing.

So we’re headed back to the sorriest and most vile defense of bigots and bigotry: “God tells me to hate gays or Muslims or Blacks or anyone I want.”

My personal take on that? You’re hearing things. Human gods work in mysterious ways, but history and the DSM-5 has been pretty clear that when God is whispering in your ear, it’s time to see the talking doctor.

Religion has, since it began, been the justification for murdering women “witches,” banishing “savages” and keeping Black people enslaved and later out of “white” schools. Not so long ago, God was the legal argument for keeping Black and white Americans from marrying. The same argument died at the hands of the Supreme Court in 2015 when homophobes argued that God says marriage is between one man and one woman. Marriage is a contract, a commitment and the key to a long list of benefits and rights that American gays and lesbians have been deprived of for more than 200 years.

Misunderstood in the constitutional protection of religious freedom is that the First Amendment doesn’t so much protect your right to your religion. It protects your right from having to follow everyone else’s religion — especially when the government tries to enshrine a single religion in the laws that affect everyone.

The best cure for all of this would be constitutional amendments making clear equal means equal for everyone: minorities, women, homosexuals and everyone else that hasn’t been included in the “all-men-are-created” touchstone for a couple of centuries.

Given that Congress, and too many southern states, are choked with Bucks, Boeberts and similar bigots, the best solution now is The Equality Act, which, after years of attempts, may actually become law. The measure passed the House Feb. 25.

For the most part, it simply codifies what the Supreme Court has twice done. It details how the Constitution protects the civil rights of LGBTQ Americans and how it does not protect the rights of bigots to discriminate against them anywhere, except in churches. There, believers are still allowed to hate on Hindus, gays, minorities or those who for whatever sad reason give them the willies.

The act, H.R.5, now heads to the Senate for some serious abuse. So it’s important to know that the measure specifically does not force churches and members to do anything it hasn’t regulated before. Right or wrong, it stands back from that.

What it does do is make indisputable in any court that the government, businesses, landlords, schools and county clerks must treat everyone equally, just like the oft-quoted words of the Constitution say.

It doesn’t mean parents have to accept different ideas about the sexuality of kids in schools, it just means you can’t impose your ideas on others. If you don’t like the notion of your child going to school with transgender students who have to go to the bathroom like everyone else, don’t send them to school, to work, to the military, or anywhere. The law is the same for LGTBQ students as it is for Black kids, Mexican kids or female kids or disabled kids. Their rights are the same as the rights of all children and parents.

You don’t have to like it or even agree with it. You just have to abide by equality laws, just like every other law.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook, or reach him at 303-750-7555 or [email protected]