Candace Owens says Democrats ‘don’t know what equality is’ as she attacks

Conservative activist Candace Owens warned on Monday night that the Equality Act threatened to end competitive sport for women, describing the bill which passed the House last week as ‘unbelievably offensive’ and ‘quite frankly, insulting’.

The bill outlaws discrimination on the basis of gender identification and sexuality – something supporters, including President Joe Biden, say provides an essential framework for protecting the LGBTQ community.

Detractors such as Owens and Donald Trump complain that it would allow transgender women to compete in women’s sports. 

Tucker Carlson, on whose show Owens appeared on Monday, said it was ‘a terrifying agenda that eliminates women’.

Candace Owens on Monday night spoke out against the passage of the Equality Act last week

A protester is seen at a transgender rights march in New York in October 2020

Owens said that she was labelled ‘a bigot, a hateful individual, a transphobe – the left likes to use these pejoratives when you are just speaking common sense.’ 

‘I find this to be unbelievably offensive: the idea there is nothing different between men and women.

‘What they are saying right now is that, LeBron James, when he was at high school, with all his physical prowess, should have been able to say: ‘I no longer identify as a man, I identify as a woman,’ and he should have been allowed to compete against every other woman, and that would have been deemed equal. An exercise in achieving equality.

‘They don’t know what equality is. They don’t know what equality means.

‘They believe in sameness. Making everybody a carbon copy of the others.

‘They hate the idea between male, female, girl, boy.’

The bill amends existing civil rights law to explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identification as protected characteristics, meaning that a person’s sexuality or gender identity cannot be used against them for employment, housing, loan applications, education, public accommodations and other areas.

But critics argue that, by removing the question of a person’s biological sex at birth, it would allow people born male into women’s spaces. The bill has been seized on by Republicans. 

Among those to express concern are some church leaders. 

Pastor Jonathan Falwell said he was concerned about the new legislation

Pastor Jonathan Falwell with Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, said the bill would force religious people to hire individuals who disagree with their beliefs, even if they fundamentally clash with their religious beliefs. 

‘If someone comes to us who disagrees with our values if they want a job, and we don’t give them a job because they disagree with God’s word, then the government can sanction us, fine us and put us out of business,’ Pastor Falwell said, according to ABC 13. 

A spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Doug Andersen, said that the Mormon Church wanted to emphasize their ‘support for equality and fairness.’ 

He added: ‘We could support legislation that provides protection for LGBT persons as well as people and institutions of faith. Both are possible and clearly required in a just society.’ 

Owens said that conservatives ‘want to make sure there are equal opportunities, but we acknowledge that there are real biological realities that cannot be ignored.’

Owens said that the Equality Act was ‘insulting’ and ‘offensive’ to her, as a woman

She concluded: ‘They told us to fear the Trump administration. But look at what Joe Biden did in his first few weeks.’

Owen’s theme echoed that of Trump, who attacked the Act in his speech to CPAC – the Conservative Political Action Conference – on Sunday.  

‘Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males,’ Trump said. 

‘It’s not good for women, it’s not good for women’s sports, which worked so long and so hard to get where they are.’

The bill faces an uphill battle to win Senate approval before it can become law. 

Donald Trump on Sunday waded into the controversy surrounding the Equality Act

The bill was passed by the House 224-206 on Thursday and now moves to the Senate

On Tuesday Inez Stepman, senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum, claimed that the effects of removing sex from criteria had already been felt.

‘In Connecticut, two biologically male athletes won a combined 15 girls state championship races, allegedly taking opportunities for further competition and scholarships from female runners in June 2019,’ she wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Trump on Sunday built on Stepman’s theme, stating: ‘The records that stood for years, even decades, are now being smashed with ease.

‘If this is not changed women’s sports as we know it will die.’

The House passed the Equality Act in the last Congress with unanimous Democratic support and the backing of eight Republicans, but Trump’s White House opposed the measure and it was not considered in the…