Microsoft won’t just correct your grammar — it’ll correct your ideology too. Thanks to new software, misspellings won’t be the only thing brought to users’ attention. The applications have a discrimination setting now, where people can be shamed for using gender-specific words like “policeman” or “congressman.” It’s all part of the tech world’s subtle liberal wave. But if the House gets its way, it won’t just be the tech world — it’ll be the whole world.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and company don’t want to stop with Microsoft. If the Equality Act passes, Microsoft Word’s correction will be nothing compared to the government’s. The computer’s red line is nothing compared to the one Democrats are drawing for anyone with natural views of marriage and sexuality. Thursday morning, House conservatives sounded one last warning before Friday’s vote that H.R. 5 will be the biggest attack on life, freedom business, sports privacy, and education this country has ever seen. And trust me: anyone who disagrees won’t want to wait to be proven wrong.

Friday morning, Pelosi’s party will take the first step in its ultimate goal: destroying religious freedom as we know it. At a press conference with Reps. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Roger Marshall (R-Kans.), and Carol Miller (R-W.Va.), I had a chance to explain how unfair the Equality Act actually is.

It is an attack on parental rights, women’s sports, but to the millions of people of faith in this country, it is an egregious attack on the freedom to believe and live according to those beliefs. It would position the government to lord over churches and other faith-based institutions, dictating potentially who they hire, how their facilities are used and even punishing them for not falling in step with a view of human sexuality that directly contradicts orthodox biblical teaching.

No institution or person of faith, be it school, church, synagogues, mosque, business, or nonprofit will escape the Orwellian reach of the Equality Act. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act will be committed to the “memory hole,” and we will then experience a catastrophic loss of religious freedom in America.

Our friends from other organizations — Penny Nance, Kara Dansky, Michael Farris, and Marilyn Musgrave — did likewise. At a time when even liberal feminists are pleading with Democrats to reconsider, Congresswoman Hartzler has tried to put the debate into perspective. In her own op-ed for the Hill, she talks about how the supposed “party of women” is waging the war on women. She talked about Selina Soule, the Connecticut high schooler, who’d waited the whole year to qualify for regionals in track — only to be beaten out by a biological boy competing against girls.

“As a former track coach, I worry for the future of women’s sports. As a member of Congress, I worry about the rights of women as more and more government policies redefine ‘sex’ to include sexual orientation and gender identity. This is already having major repercussions on the rights, privacy, safety and achievements of women and girls.” This is an imminent threat, she warns, “to the common good, freedom, and the American dream that I work every day to preserve as a representative of the people of Missouri. Members from both sides of the aisle — especially those who claim to be pro-woman and pro-children — need to stop this devastating legislation. The future of women’s rights, privacy, protection and athletic potential depends on it.

For more on the bill, check out this new Washington Times piece by FRC’s Mary Beth Waddell, ”The Inequality of the Equality Act.“

Originally published here.

Biggs Uses Deduction Reasoning in IRS Bill

Americans are a charitable bunch. But even they don’t want to be stuck with the bill for your choices — especially if that "choice” is ending an innocent human life. Unfortunately for taxpayers, they’ve been picking up the check for plenty of killing — and not just because of Obamacare. The IRS has been squeezing Americans for abortion too. And Congressman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) says that if Uncle Sam won’t draw the line — Republicans will.

He calls it the “Abortion Is Not Health Care Act” (H.R. 2742), and Wednesday afternoon, he stopped by “Washington Watch” to explain just how important the bill is. “I think most people don’t realize that you can claim an abortion as an out-of-pocket medical expense under the IRS code and get a deduction for that. And so… we’re basically saying that we’re going to prohibit that going forward.” One way to think about it, he said, is that whenever you make a tax deduction, other taxpayers are actually subsidizing it. You may get a tax break, but other Americans still have to step in and pick up the slack. In this case, the IRS is including abortion in those deductions. “We’re gonna stop that,” Congressman Biggs insisted. “Look, it’s not medical care. It’s not health care. And so, we’re putting an end to it.”

Nothing about that should be controversial. Regardless of what you think about abortion, surely both parties should agree that Americans shouldn’t be forced to bankroll it. Yet, Rep. Biggs pointed out, “People who are on the other side, who are pro-abortion, they want the world to think that that is an integral component to normal health care. It simply isn’t. It’s basically a snuffing out the life of one person.” Should you call that health care, he asked? “And the answer, of course, is no. And if we get to the truth, as we start talking about these things — the truth wins out in the end.”

In poll after poll, most Americans agree: it’s time to end the forced partnership between taxpayers and the abortion industry. Whether that’s in “family planning” dollars, Obamacare, the IRS, or international programs. “This isn’t a clever name,” Biggs said of his bill title. “What it is, though, is a powerful name, in the sense that it says exactly what the truth is — that abortion is not health care and should not be treated as health care.”

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.