Crosstalk: May 10, 2017

Peter LaBarbera is the founder and president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.

HR-2282, the Equality Act, was introduced on May 2nd. Jim described it as '...the ENDA bill on steroids.' It's designed to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Peter calls this 'the Criminalizing Christianity Act' as we've already seen the cases across the nation where people of faith have been persecuted because they won't give their consent to participation in homosexual weddings. If that's what's happening through local and state laws, Peter wonders what will happen when you put the federal government behind similar legislation.

One of the more unusual aspects of the bill has to do with economics. It claims that discrimination prevents the full participation of LGBT people and disrupts the free flow of commerce. Peter responded by noting how the LGBT crowd has always been good at manipulating language. When someone stands up for the Christian bakers and photographers, the 'left' calls it 'the license to discriminate'. This legislation discriminates against people of faith so the real discriminators are the homosexual activists. They're the ones driving people to abandon biblical beliefs, while at the same time, the government is stepping in under the guise of tolerance, equality and non-discrimination.

45% of the members of Congress have given their endorsement as co-sponsors of this piece of legislation.

HR-2119 was introduced on April 25th. It's Senate companion is S-928. This bill would prohibit what's deemed an unfair or deceptive act or practice such as conversion/reparative therapy. It means that according to federal law, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or gender non-conforming would be deemed normal and not a disease, illness, disorder, deficiency or shortcoming.

This legislation has 82 sponsors in the House and 22 in the Senate. That's approximately 20% of the House and Senate backing this ban on conversion therapy.

Jim and Peter also look at the desegregation of public facilities, the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, the Transgender Equality Task Force, some of the latest CDC statistics concerning HIV cases, Mark Green's nomination to be Secretary of the Army, Mayo Clinic now offering sex reassignment surgery and other news stories that parallel the subject matter of this program involving Target, Chick-fil-A and a pro-LGBT Florida teacher.