What’s the difference between socialists in the U.S. Congress who support the so-called Equality Act and the thugs in Hong Kong locking up people who dare to voice their opinions?

Those in Congress have sworn an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution and the others have not.

Make no mistake: The politicians promoting the Equality Act not only are derelict in their duty to protect constitutional rights, they are actively working to overthrow the constraints placed on them by the First Amendment. These legislators are behaving more like oppressive Chinese leaders than America’s founding statesmen who risked their own lives to protect the God-given rights of the people.

That’s why the new watered-down version of the Equality Act — erroneously called the Fairness for All Act, which is sponsored and backed by at least eight Republicans — is such a colossal blunder. While it would carve out speech exemptions for religious institutions, it still would control the speech and actions of ordinary American citizens.

As the Democrats deafen the nation with shrill impeachment noise in an attempt to overthrow the will of the people in their choice of president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al. are also very busy trying to thwart the Constitution in other ways. While the Republicans may have sought in good faith to protect the First Amendment with the new bill, they actually have played right into the Democrats’ hands.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are hoping their impeachment grandstanding will draw attention from their diabolical legislative efforts. It’s been said that the Democratic obsession with impeachment is keeping them from getting anything else done. In fact, the minions are quite busy in the belly of the beast assembling legislative packages that would obliterate basic constitutional rights. Are some Republicans now doing that too? If so, freedom in America has never lived in a more dangerous time.

Thank God a freedom coalition called the Conservative Action Project (of which I am a member) is constantly tracking the various efforts to bludgeon the rights of the people.

This week, CAP is sounding the alarm about the cleverly labeled Fairness for All legislation, cousin to the deceptively entitled Equality Act. (These evil bills would more accurately be titled the “Fairness for None Act” and the “Inequality Act.”)

In a memo signed by more than 100 leaders and heads of citizen groups across the country, CAP exposes the oppressive measure that “expands government power to dictate how individual Americans should think, speak, and act — specifically when it comes to sexual orientation.”

As the memo states:

In particular, the Fairness for All Act would threaten the liberty, equality, safety, and privacy of individuals in just some of the following ways:

• Medical professionals would be forced to go against their best judgment to perform sex-reassignment therapies and surgeries on people, including children. They could be sued if they didn’t offer the “correct” treatment, despite risks and warnings for these drugs and surgeries.

• Foster care agencies would be forced to promote transgender ideology and would not be allowed to seek any alternative counseling for foster children.

• Single-sex spaces like homeless shelters, locker rooms and showers would be open to men without regard to women and girls’ concerns about privacy and safety.

• In public schools, boys and men would be allowed to participate in girls’ and women’s sports merely by declaring that they are female, when they clearly are not.

• On Main Street, businesses with 15 or more employees would be forced to celebrate events and ideas that violate their deeply held beliefs.

• The free exercise of faith would be virtually banned from the public square. Those who don’t conform to the new government orthodoxy would only be “free” inside the four walls of a religious institution.

The U.S. Congress under Ms. Pelosi poses a very “real and present danger” to freedom. While the Democrats attempt to seize power and rights from the people, some breathe a sigh of relief because they think these American socialists can be stopped by the Senate or White House.

But the introduction of the Fairness for All Act reveals that the progressive arguments using platitudes to disguise a socialist agenda are either gaining steam with Republicans who should know better, or the Republicans are so overwhelmed in the congressional chaos created by Ms. Pelosi that they just aren’t paying enough attention to everything else.

Even freedom-loving congressmen can be kept so busy putting out fires that it’s easy for dangerous provisions to end up in friendly sounding proposals. If Rep. Chris Stewart truly thinks his Fairness for All legislation is constitutionally sound, then freedom in America is in greater peril than the average citizen could have ever imagined.

Thankfully, CAP is constantly educating legislators on proposals that go afoul of the Constitution. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese is a CAP leader and was its founding chairman. He lives, breathes, and knows the Constitution better than anyone. In fact, Mr. Meese is freedom’s greatest defender. CAP’s current exposé is titled “Congress Should Protect Our Constitutionally Guaranteed Freedoms, Not Threaten Our Most Basic Rights” and is available at www.conservativeactionproject.com.

Rebecca Hagelin can be reached at [email protected].