Stand strong now, with the God-given weapon of Truth

“God created them male and female, and for this reason a man shall leave his mother and father, and take to him a wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (Matt 19: 4-6)

Imagine reading aloud, in almost any public forum, those words from Jesus.

Or imagine reading the Church’s elaboration of Jesus’ teachings, such as this from Pope Francis: “Today children— children!—are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex.... Could gender, to be a woman or to be a man, be an option and not a fact of nature? This leads to error.”

Consider the Equality Act, which passed the House with unanimous Democratic support and is awaiting action in the Senate. The bill would subject to civil and criminal penalties any person or institution guilty of “discrimination ... on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, childbirth....” 

In other words, the Equality Act will render opposition by Catholics to abortion, same-sex “marriage,” or irreversible sex- reassignment surgery a crime. Faithful Catholic churches, schools, charities, hospitals, doctors, nurses, counselors, and even parents will be in constant legal peril. And the law will deny them the option of pleading religious freedom in their defense.

This radical, state-imposed moral ideology has been creeping into our laws
for several years. Some states already permit girls as young as 13 who believe they are boys to obtain double mastectomies. The Biden administration refuses to demand parental approval for such ruinous, life- changing decisions.

In effect, the Equality Act would nationalize this assault on religious liberty and the ideology of sexual autonomy that drives it. Corporate, financial, and political support for the bill is vast and growing.

Some Catholics insist that the Church’s moral doctrines are optional and should be “updated.” Others join President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in insisting they can be good Catholics while ignoring Jesus’ teachings. They also support the coercion of those who refuse to compromise those teachings. Still others are abandoning the Church altogether.

To be fair, most of us don’t want social ostracism and confrontation, let alone seek it.

But as followers of Jesus, we have some serious responsibilities—to Him, to the truth, and to our country. The ideology of the Equality Act is both a reflection and a multiplier of the human misery all around us — loneliness and alienation, addictions to drugs and pornography, spiking suicide rates among the young, the dissolution of marriage and the family. The ideology of sexual autonomy represents the demonic conceit that man can remake himself, and that politics provides the coercive means to achieve it.

It is no accident that the supporters of this bill would deny Catholics and others with morally orthodox views the right of religious freedom. The Founders put religious freedom into the constitution as an inalienable right, and to encourage religious institutions to mold public morality without government, whose power they rightly feared. 

Aquinas taught that “Truth Himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.” The Catholic answer lies with Jesus, who is Truth. The love of a married man and woman, faithful to each other and the children they beget, are icons of Jesus’ love for His creation. We Catholics have the right, and the duty, to stand together in convincing others that happiness in this life, and in the next, rests on freedom ordered to truth.

Let us use the weapons Christ has given us. The stakes are high — for us, our Church, and our beloved nation. 

THOMAS FARR is president of the Religious Freedom Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that defends religious freedom for everyone, everywhere. He is a member of the Northern Virginia Chapter.