Critics are protesting President Joe Biden's executive order on transgender protections through a "Biden erased women" hashtag based on claims that the document rolls back legal protections for women.
“President Biden’s executive order has directed federal agencies to eviscerate legal protection for women and roll back nearly 50 years of gains for women,” Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Christiana Holcomb told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’re going to have to wait and see how each agency either revokes current protection for women based on their sex or issues new policy guidance that allows biological males to, for example, compete in women’s sports.”
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday evening that sets the stage for rolling out transgender protections — a move that critics protested through the hashtag “Biden erased women” Thursday.
Under Biden's order, "all persons" are to have equal protection under the law, "no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation."
The president has already pledged to sign the Equality Act, legislation that would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect sexual orientation and gender identity. The act has come under fire for a provision to allow transgender persons to compete in female sports.
“We’re going to see the impact in the sports context but far beyond that as well, especially in healthcare and women’s shelters and restrooms and locker rooms," said Holcomb. "In fact, the executive order itself specifically called out school restrooms, locker rooms, and sports competitions. So we know that these things are coming. It’s a really scary prospect for the future of women’s sport.”
Advocates, though, say the executive order is a huge win for LGBTQ+ people, and the American Civil Liberties Union called on Biden Thursday to take even more action.
“This action by the Biden administration recognizes what the Supreme Court held last June and what we’ve long known: LGBTQ people are protected by our civil rights laws,” James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said in a statement.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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