Theology in the Raw - 869: Understanding the Equality Act: Dr. Caleb Kaltenbach

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Caleb Kaltenbach has become a leading voice in the conversation about faith, sexualtiy, and gender, and he’s spent many hours researching the Equality Act. In this episode, we discuss what the Equality Act is, look at its historical roots, the content of the act, its implications for religious liberty, and what it means for churches and Christian non-profits.  Caleb Kaltenbach is a pastor and founder of The Messy Grace Group where he helps churches love and foster community with LGBTQ individuals without sacrificing theological convictions. He's currently writing Messy Truth and has also authored God of Tomorrow and Messy Grace (where he discusses being raised in the LGBTQ community, following Jesus, and how loving others doesn’t require shifting beliefs). Besides speaking, writing, and consulting, Caleb has been guest with or featured in The New York Times, Fox and Friends, The Glenn Beck Show, The Eric Metaxas Show, Christianity Today, Focus on the Family, Family Life Today, Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast, Church Leaders Podcast, The 700 Club, unSeminary Podcast, Moody radio shows, Q Ideas Podcast, Dallas Seminary Table Podcast, and more.  A graduate of Ozark Christian College, Talbot School of Theology (Biola University), he received his doctorate from Dallas Theological Seminary. In addition to having served as a lead pastor and associate pastor, Caleb has served on the boards of ministries and colleges. He and his family live in Southern California. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. The Equality Act has been a major point of discussion within the Church and outside the Church. And in this episode, we are going to work through the Equality Act, talk about what it is, talk about the history of the Equality Act, and talk about the content of the Equality Act. Both Caleb and I have some pros and cons about the act. And yet, we want to avoid those polarized voices that are wanting to spin the Equality Act in the worst possible direction it can go or the best possible direction that it can go. I invited Caleb on the show to help us work through the Equality Act because he has spent loads of time analyzing it, researching it, thinking through it. He wrote a 100-page document

that's available on his website. The info is in the show notes, where he just works through the whole entire thing. And it's the most thorough treatment I've ever seen. So Caleb's been living and breathing the Equality Act over the last several months. And so he is really, I think, the best voice to help us navigate this contentious thing going on in our cultural moment. And Caleb also is one of those gracious, thoughtful people I know when it comes to especially LGBTQ-related questions. You might know Caleb from several books that he's written. He wrote a book called Messy Grace, where he discusses being raised in the LGBT community, following Jesus, and how loving others doesn't require shifting your beliefs.

He also wrote a book called God of Tomorrow, and he is coming out with another book called Messy Truth. Caleb Kaltenbach is a pastor and the founder of the Messy Grace group, and he is coming out with another book called Messy Truth. Caleb Kaltenbach is a pastor and the founder of the Messy Grace Group, where he helps churches love and foster community with LGBTQ individuals without sacrificing theological convictions. So Caleb is kind of known for having just such a great posture when it comes to the LGBTQ community. He is quite critical of several things in the Equality Act. And so, I mean, if you know anything about Caleb, you know it's not coming from a place of lack of love towards people, especially not a lack of love towards LGBTQ community. But he, and I guess both he and I, do see some problems with the Equality Act,

which we talk about in this podcast. Speaking of which, if you would like to support this podcast, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Let me give that again because I totally butchered it. Patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. All of the info is in the show notes. This is a listener-supported podcast. You can support it for as little as five bucks a month if you have been blessed or challenged by the content that we are producing. Again, patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. We'd love your support. All right.

Without further ado, let's get to know the episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm here with my good friend, Caleb Kaltenbach, who many of you probably know from his book, Messy Grace. And he's coming out with another book, which we will talk about a little bit in this podcast called messy truth that comes out in august and um caleb and i we we met before either of us have written publicly on the sexuality conversation oh by the way caleb i'm gonna mention i'm looking into an external camera here so it doesn't look like i'm not ignoring you i'm just yeah anyway my audience doesn't even know what that means, but so I'm looking over here at an external camera. Um, I, I, uh, I was shocked at how we both wrote our books at a similar time.

Yours came out a few months before mine. And I remember reading your book and seeing almost not quite word for word, but at least thought for thought similarities to things I wrote in my book, which we wrote them independently. I mean, just because they came out a couple months earlier, you know, it's not like I had time to read yours because my manuscript was already done. But I'm like, people are gonna think I plagiarized your book because there's so many similarities. So anyway, thank you for your work, your friendship and all that you do, man. Well, thanks for having me on, dude. It's a, it's a blast. And I love seeing what you're doing and doing through the center and your scholarship and just your heart for,

for people. And I think that's, I think Preston, that's part of what separates, um, uh, what, what makes us alike. And there are other people who like us who are, who share the similar values and so on when it comes to this conversation about sexuality. And I think it really has to do with the fact that we understand that loving your neighbor fulfills the whole law, you know, as Paul says in Romans 13, eight through 10, and we can never give up on graciousness and we allow grace to make us uncomfortable. So yeah, that's it. Yeah. allow grace to make us uncomfortable. Yeah. Allow grace to make us uncomfortable. That's a great word. And so we're going to dive into the Equality Act. And I just, with you and I, with everything we do in this conversation, the ultimate goal is to love people better. And we believe the best way to do that is to

help them to live a life in line with the Creator's design. So that our theology of marriage and sexuality is not at odds with our posture of love and grace. It's very much intertwined and woven throughout. And I need to say, even as we deal with the Equality Act, our main goal is how can we love people better, treat people better, embody grace and truth towards people better than we have. And yet this Equality Act has raised a lot of questions about that. You have written a very lengthy, very thorough paper dealing with every jot and tittle of the Equality Act. How many pages, like 80 pages or something like that? 104. That's the updated version.

Yeah. So first of all, thank you for your work on that. And that's why I wanted to have you on, because I'm like, man, especially since people might not read a hundred page paper, but they'll listen to an hour-long conversation. So why don't we just start with, why don't you just give us, for somebody that has no clue what the Equality Act even is, let's just start base level. Somebody's never heard about it. Can you explain in the most basic terms what the Equality Act is? those basic terms, what the Equality Act is. Sure. The Equality Act is a bill that has been in front of Congress in some form or fashion since 1974. And about every other year, two or three years, it's introduced to Congress. It's definitely taken some big changes over the last several years, especially since 2015. And we can talk about why that is, because that's very

pertinent to what we're talking about. We can talk about that in a second. But at its base core, the Equality Act, in so many ways, it really, it does a couple things. Number one, it amends Title VII and IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that Congress passed to include sexual orientation and gender identity. But the 1964 didn't include that. That was just about sex discrimination and race, right? Or was it just sex? Exactly. It was just sex discrimination and race. And then the second thing that it does is it really makes this other bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, or the RFRA, it makes that null and void. And basically, that has been a bill. That was a

bill that was created in 1993, and we can talk about that in a second, but that was created in 1993 to help churches and religious organizations of all different faiths, of all different religions, to protect them from the government overburdening them to the point where they can't practice their worship or where they feel like they have to change their theology because of government approachment. And so it makes the RFRA pretty much obsolete. Real quick, can you hear me? I clicked a button. I'm not sure if I went mute. Am I mute? No. Okay. Okay. I've got a bunch of construction going on above me. Hopefully, it's not coming through the mic, but I might have to mute my mic.

It's, you can't hear. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. Um, so the whole, okay. So 1964 is, you're, you know, it is now illegal to discriminate based on sex and by sex, you know, there's no debate about this then that that means biological sex, a biological female. You cannot treat them as lesser than or discriminate a job. If they apply for a job, they're able to get that job. You can't discriminate based on their sex. And now

you're saying through the years, there's been various amendments or kind of, yeah, additions, amendments, changes, not changes. Well, kind of changes, but I mean, yeah, amendments to that bill. Right, right. So there were amendments to that bill for a couple reasons. So first of all, there were two Supreme Court cases, the first one being in 1988, the second one being in 1990, that really made necessary the RFRA or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. In 1998, the U.S. Forestry Service was plowing a big road through Northern California, and they wanted to go through a sacred indigenous people's Native American burial ground. And the tribe basically objected and said, you can't do that. And they said, sure, we can. We're the U.S. Forestry Service.

And of course, this is Caleb paraphrase of the whole case. And so, you know, it went to court, court, court. The indigenous people who were involved there, they won all the way through the California State Supreme Court. And it gets the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of the U.S. Forestry Service, And the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of the U.S. Forestry Service, saying that they can go ahead and build that road, you know, and move all the different bodies and burial grounds and so on. Because that is not forcing indigenous peoples to change their religion, nor is it forcing them to to stop their worship. But people were upset about that, including Christians. And then in 1990, you have this very famous case called Employment Division versus Smith that took place in Oregon. And during this time in Oregon, in 1990, peyote was illegal.

I don't know if it still is. I'm not up on drinking peyote as part of their worship. Their employers found out about it the next day, and they were fired. And basically they said you can't fire us because we were doing this during our worship, and that's invading our worship, and they lost all their benefits and everything else. And it was just not good. And so, um, they sued the employment division all the way up to the Oregon state Supreme court. They won. It gets to the U S Supreme court. They bun it back down to the Oregon state Supreme court. Uh, the two workers and the two employees went again, it goes back up to the Supreme court and the Supreme Court rules against the two employees. And so they lose everything.

It's at this time that Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy introduced this bill, and it's called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And it passes pretty much unanimously, if not unanimously, in the House and the Senate. Bill Clinton signs it into law. Bill Clinton signs it into law. And it has been used over the years to protect religious institutions from all different religions, Bible colleges, seminaries, Christian colleges, Christian universities, Jewish preschools, Islamic centers. I mean, you just name it, it protects all of them and houses of worship. And especially it's been used for indigenous people. And then in 2014, there was another big Supreme Court case, and it's called, and you'll probably remember Hobby Lobby. And when Hobby Lobby happened,

it was the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby five to four. And what was unique about this close ruling is that part of the majority who ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, part of their rationale was the RFRA. And people just lost their minds. People said the RFRA was meant for religious nonprofit organizations, and you've taken this and applied it to a for-profit organization. And in 2015, now you have all language about the RFRA, where it basically says that the RFRA cannot be used as a defense for anything outlined in this bill. Again, that's Caleb paraphrase. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's kind of what happened with the RFRA and why that's a big deal.

There are some Christian court ministries or legal funds or whatever. You know, they'll say religious freedom is in danger. It's going to die and everything like that. And I don't quite think that it's going to die or anything. I will say, though, that if the Equality Act ever does pass, I do believe that it's going to complicate religious freedom in so many different ways. religious freedom in so many different ways. There's still a lot of things that protect the church religiously and other religious organizations, but it definitely does complicate things. So that's what makes this bill so complicated for houses of worship of all different faiths and religions and also educational institutions. So you're saying that, okay, so let's fast forward now to the Equality Act that we're talking about. Are you saying that it would say the RFRA does not – so does not protect against the content of this new bill that even religious institutions would have to abide by whatever is being promoted in the bill, which we're going to get to in a second.

We'll talk about the content of it. Yes. Yeah. So that's not a fear. There's no religious exemption. That's in section 1107. And it says literally right here, it's on page 32 in my document, the updated document, Preston. I don't know if you have or not, but we'll get it to you. Okay. I'm at the sub, I pulled up the Equality Act, so I'm at 1107. It says, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a claim concerning or a defense to a claim under a covered title or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title. So that's, it's saying, I'm trying to, I'm not good at political ease jargon. So this is saying... It's saying that it can't be used as a defense

for anything in the Equality Act when it amends section nine and section title nine and title seven of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That means that churches and seminaries and Christian colleges and so on and so forth cannot use the RFRA as a defense to only hire people who are in opposite-sex marriages. Like, you would basically be required, pretty much the way this reads, to, you know, according to the Equality Act, you know, you would be under the guise where you would have to hire people, you know, according to the Equality Act, you know, you would be under the guise where you would have to hire people, you know, who are in same-sex marriages if they apply, people who maybe have transitioned, and maybe your church or your organization doesn't agree with that. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, and you don't want to hire that individual. Under the Equality Act,

do, maybe you don't, and you don't want to hire that individual under the Equality Act, you'll be held liable. Now, there are still defenses for churches to where there are other defenses they can rely on, like ministerial exemption, for instance. The Supreme Court has been extremely favorable towards religious institutions and houses of worship when it comes to ministerial exemption. Like, it shows the federal court. And so that remains within the judicial system. It's really hard for Congress to touch that. And that's a very, very strong covering for churches and Christian colleges. But what's interesting is, like, for Christian colleges, ministerial exemption would only cover, like, biblical studies faculty, like missions faculty, ministry faculty, or maybe adjuncts who teach there, and maybe another faculty member if they

have like one Bible ministry class or they have responsibilities in chapel. All other faculty positions will not be counted as ministerial exemption, so you would be held liable to hire people, you know, uh, that are in same sex relationships, regardless of what your, um, theological statement is at your institution or regardless of what your community value says. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's gosh. Okay. Um, yeah, this gets so complicated. I'm so glad you've done the work on this. Cause I because I, yeah, these are categories that are familiar to me. So the RFRA protects the whole gambit. Right. Okay. Ministerial exemption only protects part of it. It's much more effective in churches than it is in Christian colleges or seminaries, even though I provide examples in the document of ministerial exemption being applied to places like Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and other schools and Christian colleges.

But the RFRA is much more simple because it does protect the whole gambit. And I'm glad you mentioned religious freedom. RFRA is not just a Christian thing. not just a Christian thing. Many people who are protected under that are Christians, but we're talking mosques, synagogues, indigenous religious practices, and so on. So it's important for Christians to know that, that if you stand for religious freedom, you're standing up for the rights of Muslims to be Muslim. You're standing up for the rights for people to drink peyote during a worship festival, or I guess that has historically been debated, whatever. And I think for a non-Christian democratic society,

that's a religious freedom. You don't want religious freedom to simply mean Christian freedom because that can change. And then all of a sudden now, if other people are in power, they can say, no, we want freedom for Muslim people, but not for Christians. You don't want to be selective with which religion you want protected. 100%. Okay, so let's get into the content of the Equality Act. I know there's a lot of kind of assumptions, maybe like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know anybody who's actually read the thing. I haven't read the whole thing. I've kind of been glancing

over in preparation for this. And I have some serious questions about some of the content of this, in particular the credentials of the people or persons who are in charge of writing this. I have some questions about that. But give us the – what is the Equality Act arguing for right now? Give us the – like what is the Equality Act arguing for right now? So first, the Equality Act in so many words is arguing for how the Equality Act defines equality and equity. who, uh, uh, people who are transgender or people, um, whose sexual orientation is not straight to put it in simple phrases or words. So, um, and, and I think you and I would also agree with that. Um, you know, as far as it, especially in civil society, in civil society, in the public square. And so that's where, uh, you know, there, there are a lot of problematic

things in the equality act, but I also want to point out, you know, like, and I know you do too, a couple of the, you know, good things in there. Like, for instance, there are places in our countries, municipalities, counties, so on and so forth, where it is more difficult for somebody who relates or identifies as transgender or is in the same sex relationship or however you know that person defines their orientation or relates to it you know experiences it there are places where it's tougher for them to um get home loans or you know mortgages it's tougher for them to get credit cards it's tougher for them to even participate in the jury system which i don't know if you've ever been to jury before, the jury duty.

Like I'm still here in California and jury duty. I mean, good luck if you have to go to trial. And I just think to myself, if I have to go suffer, you know, then everybody should go suffer through jury duty. Straight, gay, lesbian, whoever. I don't care. You need to be in there with me. OK, so so those are some of the good things that the Equality Act does. And it brings awareness that there are still places in our country where it is difficult. But again, it does it does raise

some problematic issues as well. Like, for instance, I'll talk about shared areas, and then we can talk about churches being public accommodations. So shared areas, obviously, this has been huge, you know, in the news, and especially with school boards lately, all across the country where, you know, the Equality Act would, you know, make it law, where, you know, public schools, shopping centers, just businesses, whatever, you would have to have shared areas where anybody could use it, you know, no matter what biological sex or what your birth sex is. So restrooms, lockers, showers, dressing rooms, so on and so forth. And for me, here's the interesting thing for me. Um, I remember when target made the announcement, I think it was back in 2016 or

something pressing when they said, um, you can use whichever bathroom you want. Um, you know, I was concerned about that. My concern was not about transgender individuals using the bathroom. My concern was about the creepy heterosexual men using opposite sex bathrooms. And sure enough, the very next week, Target had to arrest somebody at one of their stores, a dude that went into the women's bathroom and he was not, he had never experienced gender dysphoria. He was not transgender. And he tried to make the argument and he was looking underneath stalls. So you look at something like that and it's like, that's what scares me more than anything. Cause I just kind of assume the transgender

individuals have been using opposite sex bathrooms for years now. Um, but this, um, it's, it, it really opens the door and the gambit. And there is a sense in which, you know, if the RFRA cannot be applied to churches, churches and Christian colleges, they have covering as far as some employee positions. But when it comes to bathrooms and shared areas and so on, there are some big questions there. And the bill is very ambiguous. And that is very problematic, very problematic. What about athletics is another one that comes up too, right? It would be equality.

It would be a violation of equality as defined by the act if a biological male was denied the ability to play in female-only sports, right? Yeah. Yeah. So transgender woman would have complete open access no matter what to go play on a women's team, which I guess in a sense, we have to say that in that sense, the way that we assimilate in our society when it comes to sportsologically through socio, you know, cultural constructs and social rules. What's really interesting is, number one, there are many cases, increasing cases of transgender women, biological men who have transitioned or boys who have transitioned who are now playing sports. And in many cases, they just blow a lot of women out of the water. And I'm not trying to say women are weak. There are times when women blow them out of the water. But I'm just saying that there is something where, you know,

depending on the guy, they're a lot stronger usually. And, you know, how athletic they are, they can just, you know. So I've heard that, I've heard that, I've heard that how, and I don't know if, let me try to formulate my question. Cause I know, and again, I just acknowledge, we're dealing with very sensitive things and assumptions and clickbaity kind of headlines and stuff. Is it, it seems like it is a tiny percentage of people, trans-identified people, who are biological males

trying to play in female-only sports. Or I guess, let me friend that as a question. Is this a non-fringe issue? Are we talking about three or four kind of headlines that have made it in? Because I've seen the, you know, the, what is it, the rugby player, this like six foot four biological male rugby player who identifies as female just blowing through women and just destroying them.

I don't know if you've seen videos of footage of that. You have the boxer. What's her name? I don't know. Again, a biological male identifies as female who is, you know, I think is just busting up other females. You get from Ola Pacific Games, you have the UCI Masters Cycling World Championship. I mean, the thing is, is that, yeah, I mean, here's the thing, there are increasing examples. Okay. okay that's

what that's that's what i'm asking like are we talking about three or four global cases or are we talking about 30 or 40 are we talking about a massive increase that's happening or we're talking about i wouldn't say a massive increase but it is an increase in what's happening globally say as well um and and and what's interesting that the corresponding you know side of this is you don't really – I hardly see any stories of transgender men, women that have transitioned to be men. I hardly see any cases of transgender men fighting to play sports on men's teams. Well, yeah. That's not a thing. And so I'm like – I just think that's interesting. And not too many people

address that. Yeah. I, you know, and I don't, I don't address it much in here. I think I have a sentence on it, you know, because again, I'm not trying to add to the culture war. I'm trying to help people understand, you know, what's going on. But there is something to be said for that. You know, if this is about equality all the way around, why is it not happening on the corresponding, you know, transition? Is it just this one? I just listened to a podcast with Andrew Sullivan's podcast I listened to and they were talking about he was he was on in conversation with what's her name? Julie Bindle. She's like a radical feminist. And they were discussing exactly what you raised. Andrew raised the exact same question you did. Like, how can we don't,

if, oh, because the question came up, like, I think Julie said, if testosterone is kind of the key ingredient that makes men more sexually aggressive, more violent, stronger, all these things, and how come when a biological female takes testosterone, you don't see a high percentage of trans men, biological females identifying as men, with the kind of high rates of being sexual predators and being physically violent and all these things. If testosterone is simply the kind of, you know, the key ingredient, I think some of that has to do not just with artificial use of testosterone, but actually going through the natural processes of puberty so that even a male who identifies as female maybe takes estrogen and has a more female appearance. If they have still gone through

puberty as a male, they have a bone structure, muscle mass, and other things. Those are irreversible. I don't care how much estrogen you take or how much testosterone you reduce. So that you would really have to almost take a pre-adolescent, like somebody who had never went through the puberty with their biological sex, went on blockers, went on cross-sex hormones, like that biological male might not be at much of a advantage in, in an athletic arena, but that's, that's so rare, especially with the massive debate about puberty blockers and it's going on. So, yeah, we, yeah, anyway, we're, we don't want to get too lost in the weeds. So, so changing, so, so changing spaces, sleeping arrangements, bathrooms would be, would be based on gender identity, not biological sex.

Yeah. There's even questions with churches on student ministry, overnight trips, retreats, conferences, youth camps, children's camp. If you do have a student or a child that considers themselves to be transgender, would it be illegal for the church to say, no, we assimilate people by biological sex, so you need to be in this cabin? And even in what I do, I've had to help so many churches think through that. Two of them almost got sued because of it recently. So and trying to think through accommodations is no small challenge when it comes to transgender students. And my heart goes out to transgender students.

I'm not talking bad about them. I'm just saying, you know, as Christians, you know, as you say, you know, we want to create environments where it's easy for people to find and follow Jesus. And some of the times we need them in the right headspace, too, so that they feel comfortable and safe and so on and so forth. And so churches do that and it becomes difficult. And that's one of those things where the RFRA wouldn't cover churches. And this bill is just very ambiguous when it comes to religious organizations. So I think that they're hoping that that would be fought out in court or other people would be responsible for another bill so they don't have to sign on to it. And to me, that's just politicians all over the place. This is a super dumb question, I think. So you mentioned Target earlier. Target had a policy that bathrooms are now based on gender identity, not biological sex. So this has been

happening. But what the Equality Act would do is make it a federal offense if somebody doesn't do that right it's mandatory but right now a business can say we have all gender bathrooms whatever like who are you know wherever you want to go is if it matches your gender identity go use your bathroom and so that can happen on an individual level but this would make it legal yeah yeah under title seven especially for forprofit businesses, you would have to do that. So I have up right now section 1101 where it says definitions and rules. And I remember reading this. I'm bewildered. Texted me like, Caleb, did you write this or what's this in there? Like, if you wrote this, we need to talk, bro.

Well, it was I was like, hey, are you representing them correctly? Because this is so bizarre that, you know, I just want to make sure you're not misrepresenting. And you said, I'm just quoting them. I'm like, wait, this is just a quote from the Equality Act? Because this is so – I'll just say it. It's horrible. And I'm not saying horrible like it doesn't agree with a Christian position or it doesn't – I'm not even saying the conclusion. I'm saying they're working with definitions that make zero sense and there's not a single academic on the – okay, there's 99% of people that have any kind of knowledge of the conversation would not – they would laugh at these definitions, whether they're trans or not, or an activist. So it says, here's how they define sex, which you can take any biological textbook, take any textbook written by anybody that deals with this conversation. And their definitions do not agree with that. Sex, I'm just going to read it. Sex includes, now sex means biological sex. That's precisely what the 1964 Act, that's the whole point of it. And any kind of gender theorist or gender activist

would agree that sex means biological sex. They would just invest gender identity with more weight. But they're not going to define sex means biological sex, male or female. But the Equality Act says sex includes, and this is not a joke, a sex stereotype. That's B, or that's A. B, pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition. I don't even know what they're talking about there. At least that is referring to some kind of biological category here. So that's okay.

I would love to explore that more. Or C, sexual orientation or gender identity. That, I don't, the whole point of gender identity is to talk about an aspect of human nature in distinction from sex. They say sex includes gender identity. That makes zero sense with anybody who has any knowledge of this conversation. And then point D, sex also includes sex characteristics, including intersex traits. Again, that I can live with. I think they're talking about anatomy or some biological

category. But this is, I don't know how anybody would, where do they get this from? It doesn't exist in any kind of far left, far right kind of like academic approach to this conversation. I think they get it from their own political minds of how can they craft things and word things to try to make everybody happy but at the same time don't get people mad and at the same time make sure that they get reelected and so on and so forth. Because I really, really believe that the ultimate purpose of this is for influence, power and reelection. I think it's a power grab. influence power and reelection. I think it's a power grab. One of the scholars I quote again and again in this, Douglas Laycock, who is a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, he's written extensively on this. He actually supports same-sex marriage publicly and theologically, but he is 100% against the Equality Act. And he is a very

progressive Democrat, but he is against the Equality Act. And I quote him time and time again in this document where he says, this is a power grab. This is what this is. This is a power grab. This is about power. And if it's about power, you're not going to be concerned about wording things in ways that actually help people. You're going to be concerned about wording, you know, terms in ways that don't make you look bad. And I think too, Preston, this is why there are countless numbers of feminist individuals and lesbian women who do not support the Equality Act.

Well, yeah, when you talk, when you define sex as a sex stereotype, feminists have worked 100 years to get rid of that. That is the most patriarchal, hyper-conservative statement I've seen in a long time, that what it means to be a male is you must be masculine. Right. That's basically what this definition is saying. Masculinity is included as part of what sex is. So if you're not masculine, then maybe you're not like not like really so you're telling me a guy wrote this oh of course yeah

no woman probably has even read this i mean like like i've been like consulted on this no feminist whatever be you see that's part of the reason why so many feminists have a problem with transgender women playing sports was that it sets back women's rights for women's suffrage and feminism i mean that's why title nine was created you know to separate you know and create separate biological sports teams biological sex sports teams so that women could fairly compete and then this pretty much undoes all of that so that's we do have a lot of uh and you don't hear this in the news and other places. And I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's not part of the narrative.

And so you're not always going to hear it. But that's why you have a lot of individuals who you wouldn't think are against the Equality Act who are against it. Yeah. Well, it doesn't seem to be amending the 1964 Act but actually reversing it and bringing us back to a pre 1964 kind of era. And I, let me, let me acknowledge here that the hot button, the three kind of, as I hear you talk three really concerning controversial points are kind of like athletics, bathrooms, changing spaces, and religious freedom seem to,

to my mind, be the ones that are the most a bit- And public accommodations. Public accommodations. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to say that an overwhelming majority of people, this is, I guess, anecdotal, but I'm just going to say it. Overwhelming majority of people who identifies trans or experienced gender dysphoria are not the kind of like activists trying to change bathroom policies or trying to push their way into athletic. We are still talking about a small percentage of actual trans people.

Yes. And if Christians, so I'm speaking to my people to the right of me now, if Christians only get fired up and speak out with athletics and public accommodations and you're not walking with or trying to reach out and love the many people in our churches, outside our churches, our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers who are wrestling with their gender for whatever reason, then that's, it's kind of like the Christians who you never hear them even mention anything about race until CRT comes around and then they have a statement against

CRT and then they go back into their white churches. And it's like, wait a minute, if you haven't been talking about race for all these years and this is the only time you're going to talk about race, it just doesn't look too good. So I want to warn against Christians only getting maybe fired up with some aspect of the Equality Act. At the same time, I think this is not going to be helpful for society on so many levels. No, no, it won't. And I think, number one, I love what you said about, you know,

religious freedom is not just a Christian ideal. It's an everybody ideal. It's part of what is supposed to make America, America. But the fact of the matter is, is that I understand, and I know you do too from New Testament studies, that when the church is persecuted, it grows. So I get that. I get that, and I understand. But on the other hand, I also believe that religious freedom makes society better in general. It creates a really conducive experience to be able to share the gospel freely with people, you know, as much as you can. I understand it creates a lot of lukewarm Christians, but the benefits that it gives us to share the gospel around the world and share the gospel here, I think far outweigh the negative aspects of it. And I think, again, in general, it makes society better. And

when society is better, it is easier for people to hear about Jesus. And so that's why I support religious freedom, you know, because it does make our society better. That's great. Okay, so if a church, let's just say this passes, and I have questions about even is it or what does that process even look like? Let's just say it passes. Does this mean that churches will simply lose their nonprofit status if they don't abide by it? Or is it more than that? Is it they will be guilty of federal offense if they don't abide by the Equality Act? Well, if it passes, here's what's going to happen. If it passes, there's going to be immediate lawsuits, I would imagine the same day, and it's going to go into a court.

And I imagine that there will be some kind of federal judge who will put a stop on some aspects of it. There will be a federal judge somewhere. And I guarantee you that whenever it does pass, it will get to the Supreme Court. I do not think it'll pass this year. And the reason why it passed unanimously, almost, no, it had unanimous Democratic support in the House, but it won't pass the Senate, even though Democrats have a majority of, I think, one or two seats in the Senate. With highly contested and controversial bills. The filibuster rule applies where you need 60 votes instead of 51 for a bill to pass. And so I find like eight or nine Republicans to sign off on this and they're not going to.

So that's why I say unless something big happens, I don't see it passing. I do see a passing one day. And I think we need not underestimate the fact that a version of this could pass in some way under state, on the state level or city level. I was working with one church a couple months ago, where something like the Equality Act, a bunch of city ordinances in their city passed. And so one of the campuses at their church now, they had to deal with an Equality Act type situation except it was just within their city. And, I mean, you've been an elder at the church and you know that the city can be really frustrating to work with. They can make your life miserable. And so, you know, we had to immediately get together and we had to start talking about, okay,

bathrooms and, you know, public accommodations, because once you do an outreach or once you rent out your facilities to anybody in the community, um, you know, according to the equality act, um, the church would be seen in those moments as public accommodation. So that would need to be open to everybody, no matter what. You know, it wouldn't need to be open to, for lack of a better example, or here's just one example. Like if Planned Parenthood wanted to do an outreach at a church and, you know, a church is, you know, for life from birth all the way through death and they support life that way. And they're like, no, we're going to refuse on the basis of theological disagreement. You can't do that. You can refuse on scheduling conflicts, but not on the basis of theological disagreement. And there's only so long until the scheduling excuse runs out and you start getting in trouble, you know? And so,

you know, that's why, you know, this particular church made the decision, Hey, we're not even going to, we're not our church, church right now. We'll let people use it for free, but we're not going to rent it out because they're held to all of the different, all of those different stipulations. And so, um, that, that whole public accommodations thing can get really, really trippy. Do you think this will – I mean, I just can't imagine that – I'm shocked that – because to me this isn't even a partisan thing. So you're saying that 100% of the Democrats in Congress or in the House – In Congress, in the House.

Define sex as a sex stereotype? To me, that's not a partisan thing. That's just Congress or in the House? In Congress, in the House, in the House. Define sex as a sex stereotype? Like that to me, you don't need it. That's not a partisan thing. That's just an absurd statement. Like that's. I don't think any of them wanted to be seen as not voting for the Equality Act. And there were three Republicans, I think, too, who voted for two in the House. So and I think this is what makes it so ghastly is that you have a lot of people who are clapping when it passes like we care about the LGBTQ community and our LGBTQ neighbor and family and friends and transgender teens.

And then we're going to send this to the Senate and they know it's going to bomb in the Senate. They know it's not going to pass. They know that they have created a bill that is not going to pass. And yet here they are acting like they've accomplished this big thing. going to pass. And yet here they are acting like they've accomplished this big thing. And if they really cared about the suicidality of LGBTQ students and teens and transgender individuals, they would create something like the Utah Compromise, you know, like what happened all the way back in 2015 when you have Mormons, Christians, feminists, and LGBTQ individuals get together, lock themselves in a room, and they come

out with a bill, you know, that everybody is happy with. I don't know what that is. You mentioned it earlier, the Utah, that's what happened in this Utah act? Yeah, yeah. So basically, you know, you can look it up. And this is a precursor to the Fairness for All Act. Okay. Which if you've heard of that, that is kind of like the alternate to the Equality Act. to the Fairness for All Act, which if you've heard of that, that is kind of like the alternate to the Equality Act. And the Fairness for All Act is basically the Equality Act without some of the sportsists, and LGBTQ individuals started working together, and they created this bill, which is now known afterwards as the Utah Compromise. Basically, all of these people got together, and they created a bill that protected LGBTQ individuals from discrimination within the civil square while allowing freedom of religion

and freedom to implement church policies. And so even though people in Utah celebrated this and it's going well, when this was taken to the federal level and they tried to do the same thing, it drew the ire of many and so many people are like, no, we're not doing this. And the reason why they say no again, elections, power, influence. Yeah, I'm with you there. Okay, in the Equality Act, does it say anything about counseling or psychological or whatever approaches to teenagers with a gender identity that doesn't match their biological sex? For instance, does it outlaw alternative psychological approaches to trans teens under the banner of that's all conversion therapy if you don't affirm their gender identity?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. You're not – yeah, and I know you're not talking about conversion therapy, but just you're talking about even pastoral counseling or biblical counseling that is not conversion, but because it comes from, you know, I guess, lack of a better phrase, cisgender point of view, you know, theologically, then bam, right there. Yeah.

So I, I honestly, I can't remember. Okay. Honestly, I can't remember, but I wouldn't be surprised. And I'm sure that some aspect of it could be interpreted that way. Okay. Yeah. Well, I know that that's in a lot of this. Is it the SOGI laws or whatever, the sexual orientation, gender identity, where again, those are two very different things and they're being collapsed together, which my lesbian feminist friends tell me it's just kind of like you keep saying a power grab. It's, you know, we've already won the public that conversion therapy is bad. And both you and I would say, yeah, that's not our approach we're advocating for. But it's really easy to kind of smuggle in gender identity change under the banner of conversion therapy when gender identity change is another way of saying helping teenagers live in their bodies, which for many decades has been a good thing,

you know, we've been trying to do. But if you call it conversion therapy to help somebody accept their body, then you can kind of, yeah, it's just so much of it's kind of a language power game too, you know, using certain phrases to describe certain things. Totally. And that's why I say I think that even though this won't pass, I think there are things that churches and religious organizations can do today to start getting ready for that. Because, again, you don't know if it won't pass on a state level or city level like like the illustration I just gave you not too long ago. It is,

as you can imagine, probably much easier to pass on a city level or even a state level, depending on the state. The Equality Act? Well, a version of it, except at a state level or city level. Oh, so this isn't, we're not dealing just with the Equality Act on a federal level. You're saying there's going to be various versions of this on state and city levels. Oh, okay. So I don't even know how all this works. So that's why I say I was working with the church a couple months ago, and their city passed a version of this, you know, not the exact same, but with a lot of the same stuff. And so now one of their church campuses is in this particular city. They're having to think through all this stuff as if the Equality Act has happened because in a sense it has happened at their city level.

And the city can be much more in the weeds than the federal government depending on the issue. You know what I mean? So – and that's why I say I think that – I do not think it will pass this bill. I think there's a good chance it could pass one day, but I don't think it will pass this year, probably not next year. But the thing is, is that I would not be surprised again if portions of it don't find themselves in other bills that get brought up or if that, again, state or city level. So I think churches need to start preparing now and getting ready for that. That's a great, great distinction, because on a federal level, I can't imagine, because I know same-sex marriage being passed

on a federal level, that was a shock to everybody, but to me, it kind of wasn't. Same-sex marriage, you're dealing with basically a clear black and white, like conservative, liberal question. You know, if you're conservative, you're probably against it. If you're liberal, you're probably for it. But with this, some of the most outspoken people are very, very liberal, anti-conservative, anti-religious. Like you said, lesbians, feminists, and even, I mean, quite a number of just LGBTQ people, older transsexual people who identify as transsexual, not transgender, would be against some of the younger trans activism that they see,

they would see as being kind of just like anti-scientific. So yeah, it just seems like there's many kinds of people who would be much on the liberal side of things that would have problems with this, as you even mentioned earlier with the guy who's done work on it. Yeah, and when people say – when they have polls saying that people, 70%, 80%, 60%, 55%, whatever percentage it is, support the Equality Act, I guarantee you those people have not read it.

Okay, number one. I guarantee you. Number two, if you get a phone call or a text and you're being pulled and you decide to take it, do you want to be the person that says, no, I don't support the Equality Act? I'm not for the equal rights of LGBT people. Like, who's going to say that, aside from a few radical conservatives today? Right, right. I mean, there are those out there and, you know, they probably love Nickelback and love listening to Nickelback. But other than that, you know, the majority of people are, honestly, they're going to tell a white lie and they're going to say, yeah, yeah, I support it,

but they haven't read it, you know, or they've only heard about it and that's it. And you read it and you start getting a little, more than a little bothered. Yeah. And you read it and you start getting a little more than a little bothered. Yeah. Wow. Well, Caleb, thanks for your work on this. Can people get that long paper you wrote? Is it posted somewhere that they can access or do you just send it to people? I don't want to get a hundred emails after this episode of people wanting it, but is it posted somewhere? No, no, that's fine.

I've sent it out to hundreds of people already. I'm happy to do so. If you go to calebkaltenbach.com or messygracegroup.org, you just scroll down and you look for the Equality Act. You click on the link under resources on each website and then, you know, pull out the form. Tell me what church you go to. You know, tell me, you know, just that kind of stuff. It'll tell you what to say in the form. And then I'll email it right over to you. Okay, cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, bro. It was great talking to you again.

And yeah, well, I'll have you back on to talk about your book, Messy Truth. I've read it, endorsed it. It's, as with Messy Grace, man, it's a fantastic book. So yeah, but let me, let's, uh, I don't want to just tack that on at the end here. Let's have another podcast in a couple of months and we'll talk about it. Thank you.