Since taking office, President Joe Biden has issued a sweeping spread of executive orders affecting the coronavirus pandemic, environment, labor, immigration, and more. He immediately swept aside many policies put in place by his predecessor. Biden is expected today to sign an order requiring $15 per hour minimum pay and emergency paid leave for federal workers.
But what has conservatives upset more is a Biden order built upon last year’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling extending protections afforded under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to LGBTQ Americans (Washington Post):
Biden’s order calls on agencies across the federal government to review existing regulations and policies that prohibit sex discrimination, and to revise them as necessary to clarify that “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” Biden’s executive order states. “Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes. People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.”
The executive order set the stage for an administration that has pledged to pursue a “bold” agenda on LGBTQ issues and that has already named LGBTQ leaders to prominent positions in the administration.
For all their small-government, fiscal-conservative pretensions in the land of “created equal,” what really riles up conservatives is treating other people like people. After Biden signed the order Thursday, the Post reports, the hashtag #BidenErasedWomen began trending.
“On the same day he called for healing and unity, President Joe Biden signed a radical divisive transgender executive order that threatens the privacy and safety of women in single-sex facilities, equality and fairness in single-sex sports, and good medicine based on the reality that males and females are biologically different,” said Ryan T. Anderson, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“In reality, it spells the end of girls’ and women’s sports as we know them,” Anderson added. Because conservative organizations like Heritage and the Federalist Society exist first and foremost to protect American sports. Which is why multiple news outlets (including two owned by Rupert Murdoch) quote condemnation of Biden’s order by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, whose stable of retired military officers are recognized authorities on women’s sports.
Naturally, Republicans on Capitol Hill raced to save our sports:
On the same day Biden gave the order, Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) tweeted that “by forcing biological female athletes to compete against biological male athletes in competitive sports, we are taking away women’s opportunities on and off the field.”
On Thursday, Steube reintroduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act which he had put forward earlier in the month before Biden took office and which is backed by 13 other GOP lawmakers.
In a statement, he said the bill would “protect women and girls in competitive sports. It states that “in athletics, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
One thing the Trump presidency demonstrated is that so much of conservative pearl-clutching has little to do with concerns not-so-cleverly hidden behind small-government or fiscal conservative window-dressing and preening over values. Who counts as equal and who gets excluded is where the battle lines lie.