EDITORIAL: Senate should pass Equality Act
Mar. 1—As the U.S. House passed the Equality Act on Thursday, some members of Congress helpfully demonstrated why it is needed.
The bill would ensure that rights protected under labor and civil rights laws explicitly to include sexual orientation and gender identification as covered characteristics.
Those non-discrimination requirements pertain to employment, housing, loan applications, education access, public accommodations and any other matter covered by the existing laws.
Federal legislation is necessary because some states, shamefully including Pennsylvania, do not provide those anti-discrimination protections.
One day after the House passed the bill, Sen. Rand Paul launched into a transphobic tirade during the confirmation hearing as assistant secretary of health for Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania's former health secretary, who would become the highest-ranking transgender federal official in history.
Rand suggested that Levine, a pediatrician, hadn't considered children's welfare in her work on the medical, ethical and psychological aspects of gender assignment.
Some Republican House members twisted the equal rights bill into a supposed attack on religion. And the woeful Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia placed a sign outside her office taunting Democratic Rep. Marie Newman of Illinois, who had displayed a transgender symbol at her nearby office in support of her transgender daughter.
For all of that sound and fury, this is at root a fundamental matter of equal rights that the Senate should pass.
