Equality Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. STEUBE. Mr. Speaker, unlike most speeches you will hear on this floor today, I am going to start with the truth.

Deuteronomy 22:5 states: A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.

Now, this verse isn't concerned about clothing styles but with people determining their own sexual identities. It is not clothing or personal style that offends God but, rather, the use of one's appearance to act out or take on a sexual identity different from the one biologically assigned by God at birth. In his wisdom, God intentionally made each individual uniquely either male or female.

When men or women claim to be able to choose their own sexual identity, they are making a statement that God did not know what he was doing when he created them. I am going to quote directly from Dr. Tony Evans' commentary Bible on this passage of Scripture: ``Men and women equally share in bearing the image of God, but he has designed them to be distinct from and complementary toward one another. The gender confusion that exists in our culture today is a clear rejection of God's good design. Whenever a nation's laws no longer reflect the standards of God, that nation is in rebellion against him and will inevitably bear the consequences.''

Mr. Speaker, I am going to read that line again. ``Whenever a nation's laws no longer reflect the standards of God, that nation is in rebellion against him and will inevitably bear the consequences.'' I think we are seeing the consequences of rejecting God here in our country today, and this bill speaks directly against what is laid out in Scripture.

Our government, through this bill, is going to redefine what a woman is and what a man is. It can be anyone who identifies in that gender at any time. You are going to singlehandedly end women's sports and all the gains for women's rights contained in Title IX that was passed in this body since 1972. Singlehandedly destroying women's sports in the name of equality, how ironic.

If biological men compete in women's sports, then it is no longer women's sports at all. We might as well just have one sports team per event, and women, transgender women, men, transgender men can all compete against each other. How is that for equality?

If biological differences didn't matter, we would never have created and funded separate teams for men and women. We know that science supports the idea that there are performance differences between biological men and women in competitive sports, and it is just common sense to the vast majority of Americans, just not common sense to this Democratic majority.

In Connecticut, three high school female track runners have had to file a lawsuit because their Title IX protections were violated by biological male athletes competing against them. They had no choice but to file suit after they were forced to compete against biological male athletes, and after those biological male athletes brought home 15 women's State championship titles. I could stand up here and give you example after example of this happening throughout our country in all sports categories, but I don't have near the time.

Mr. Speaker, if you want to protect women's sports, then vote against this bill.

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