The Equality Act currently pending in the U.S. Senate would, if passed, prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people in public places and institutions. It doesn’t dictate what churches must do or what anyone has to believe.
But that’s not stopping Lauren Witzke, the failed Senate candidate from Delaware who now promotes right-wing conspiracy theories, from spreading lies about it. Appearing on Infowars, she claimed that passage of the Equality Act would criminalize Christianity. Somehow.
“There is a war on Christians,” Witzke said. “They targeted me, and they made an example out of me because I’m an outspoken Christian who vocally opposes the Equality Act. … They’re trying to illegalize Jesus Christ and the Scripture and categorize it as hate speech.”
“What it will do is it will classify scripture, belief in traditional marriage, as hate speech,” she continued. “If an abortionist wants to make the decision to not perform an abortion, they can arrest that abortionist or that doctor or that nurse that chooses to take the biblical approach and change their lives. Children who struggle with gender identity — now it’s going to make it illegal for them to pursue therapy to change their mind. This is absolutely an attack on Christians. Even just quoting scripture will be classified as hate speech. … It is going to make Christianity a crime on a federal level.”
All of that is a lie. Witzke is a liar. She’s a Christian and she’s a liar. Nothing in her faith ever taught her that lying is bad.
It also never occurs to Witzke that plenty of LGBTQ people are themselves Christians, or that churches aren’t affected by the law, or that this sort of faith-based fear-mongering occurred before marriage equality was legal everywhere and the sky didn’t end up falling then either.
The sad thing is that she’s not a fringe figure. She was the Republican Party’s Senate nominee. She’s spreading the same lies you hear other Christian publications spreading because none of them are willing to face reality about this legislation.
No one should trust any pastor unwilling to admit that the Equality Act would have no effect on what they preach from the pulpit. The cowards who refuse to speak out against these lies are part of the problem, too.
(via Right Wing Watch)
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