On Monday, vacuous Hollywood-controlled singer Taylor Swift released the music video for her song “You Need To Calm Down.” The number — which features brilliant, Shakespearean lyrics like “But you saw it in a Tweet, that’s a cop-out” — explicitly aims to lecture anyone who dares to hold opposing views of the LGBTTQQIAAP (and around 1000 other letters) community. The video stays consistent with this motif, focusing heavily on homosexual activity amidst an angry crowd of Christians, who are depicted as ignorant, lower-class white people.

The wonderfully insightful video ends with narrow yellow text on a pink screen telling viewers to support the “Equality Act” to ensure that “our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.” Considering that the plurality of her fan base is presumably below the age of eighteen, I would be astonished if the majority of them even knew who the vice president was. But here they are, being asked to support a sweeping bill that would curtail both religious and constitutional rights, and ultimately the very liberty that America was founded upon.

When a bill is titled the Equality Act, it’s quite difficult to say that you outright oppose it. With a name like that, it immediately draws parallels to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, unlike the above-mentioned bill, actually aimed to enhance the constitutional and liberal rights of the populace, not diminish them.

So what does the Equality Act entail? Here’s a brief summary, courtesy of the Congressional Research Service:

This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in a wide variety of areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation. The bill expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services. The bill allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

Fundamentally, the measure is predicated on two principles. The first is that gender identity is as equally legitimate and conspicuous as race and sex. The second is that our God-given right of religious liberty that the First Amendment reminds us of shall cease to exist when the Left deems it contentious.

Both posits are equally bonkers, but let’s begin with the former. Under the provisions of the measure, gender identity is held as a protected class from “discrimination,” and, as thus, can never be questioned or debated. I use the term “discrimination” lightly, as the Equality Act considers the forbiddance of a man from playing on a women’s sports team as discrimination. Similarly, a female being restricted from utilizing a men’s restroom is also a discriminatory policy, per the bill.

If this bill actually became law, say tomorrow, I could wake up, and, identifying as a woman, utilize any women’s restroom of my choosing. Any man could for that matter. If anyone dared to stop me or any other fellow man from doing such a protected act, they would face legal charges. It doesn’t matter what the motives for the swap in “gender identification” were. I could identify as a different gender every day, and who could stop me?

Similarly, if I was on a sports team and was just awful — always on the bench, never got to play, just simply atrocious —, but the women’s alternative wasn’t too great, I could identify as a woman and join the female’s alternative the next day. Due to me having a general biological advantage — more testosterone and a different musculature —, I become team captain within a month. If players on the rival team complain, they are simply discriminative monsters.

These may just simply sound like hypothetical arguments, but they are actual incidents that have occurred throughout the country on a myriad of occasions. And under the act, they would be perfectly legitimate. To the Left, gender identity is as rudimentarily biological as race and sex. Despite the fact that the definition of “woman” is an adult female — according to virtually all dictionary services — and the definition of “man” is an adult male — again, according to all established lexicons —, gender is somehow malleable. It’s an abstract feature, a characteristic that doesn’t really exist and is plainly in our minds.

For a fun show, President Trump should declare tomorrow that he identifies as a woman, and thus, is the first female president. Watch how quickly the Left drop their nominally graceful respect for transgenders.

The second principle that underlies the act is equally worrisome. The Left truly believes that our inalienable right to religious liberty that is reminded to us in the First Amendment should discontinue when it contests views held by them.

Take the bill’s use of the term “sex” for example. As the language of the act semantically stretches the definition of “sex” to include “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition,” and the term “related medical condition” refers to abortions, employers would be forced to cover abortions for their employees or face discrimination charges. Moreover, no qualified medical professional could refuse to perform an abortion, even when citing religious reasons. In addition, employers would be mandated to pay for sex “reassignment” surgeries, and medical professionals would be required to conduct them.

This notion of nullified religious liberties propagated by the Left has been in action for years now. Take the case of Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who, in 2012, refused to create a custom-made cake that endorsed same-sex marriage due to it opposing his personal religious beliefs. Although the issue at hand didn’t inherently regard religious liberty — it was really over whether an owner of a business can choose which services they offer regardless of the circumstances, which is an evident right —, the Left interpreted Phillips as being a homophobic, censorious individual, and manifested the contestation into a Supreme Court case, to which he won by a near-unanimous vote.

It’s important to note that the Equality Act is essentially an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which aimed to restitute the constitutional and legal rights that black Americans were excessively lacking during the era of Jim Crow laws. As Matt Walsh at The Daily Wire put it, the Democratic Party is effectively “equating the persecution of black Americans to the ‘persecution’ of biological males who are simply asked to use the same restroom as every other biological male.” To Democrats, the egregious discrimination blacks faced — from segregated water fountains to racially separated schools — was as equally jeopardizing as a contemporary man being restricted from entering a women’s restroom.

Although the act was passed easily in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives in May, it would have to take an act of God personally for it to succeed in the Republican-controlled Senate. And thank Him for that. If there ever were to be a time in our near distant future, though, where Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches of government, the Equality Act would assuredly be one of the first items on their agenda, alongside legalizing illegal immigration, forbidding citizens from owning semi-automatic weapons, and designating Ilhan Omar as ambassador to Israel.

Let’s hope that time never commences.

Daniel Schmidt is a 16-year-old political commentator and opinion writer. In his freshman year of high school, he founded The Young Pundit, a hard-hitting news commentary outlet featuring young, incisive, and unbought conservative voices. To read more about Daniel, click here.