Most anti-discrimination policies work by acknowledging physical distinctions and always have. If you can declare your gender identity, many women who currently need legal protection from discrimination will no longer have it.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has apologized, yet again, for identifying herself as a Native American. This time, the Massachusetts Democrat’s apology came in front of a Peterborough, New Hampshire bowling alley in early December. Almost a year after her ill-advised DNA test, she is still trying to shake off the embarrassing debacle.

Warren knows the episode will dog her as she continues her bid for the White House. Yet her public-relations fiasco exposes an uncomfortable truth about Warren: She still clings to the belief that a subjective emotional feeling can determine identity.

Warren understands now that her opinion about being Native American did not entitle her to claim tribal membership. Nevertheless, she continues to evince strong support for the transgender agenda which based upon the same faulty principles.

Women and minorities should take careful note of Warren’s deeply held opinion that feeling can define sexual identity. That established tenet of LGBTQ dogma threatens not only women but all Americans who still require legislation to protect their access to equal opportunity.

Currently, Warren is polling behind former Vice President Joe Biden and ahead of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Like the rest of the remaining field, Warren supports HR 5, the “Equality Act.” This is important. While Warren has abandoned her claim that she was a member of a protected ethnic class, her outspoken support of the Equality Act bespeaks a stubborn and persistent belief that a person’s self-expressed designation can nonetheless be the arbiter of legal identity.

Under a Warren presidency (or for that matter, a presidency of any current Democrat) the ramifications of the Equality Act’s passage would be devastating for pre-existing protected classes.

A valid claim to membership in a special class traditionally has been determined by a physical circumstance that the claimant does not personally control (like race or sex). Warren had claimed she believed was of native descent because of her family’s oral history. She was native American because she believed herself to be—therefore she could lay claim to the privileges and endowments that weren’t rightfully hers as a white woman.

Her public contrition over her claim has never addressed the most obvious and egregious aspect of that assumed heritage: She had used her alleged identity to gain competitive advantage throughout her career. Each time that she did so, Warren took the place held for a person whose race granted them special protection and preference in hiring. Despite hard evidence from her Texas Bar Association application and her controversial hiring at Harvard under that status, she has not addressed that major ethical violation.

The Equality Act attempts to rectify a perceived shortcoming of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by defining and validating sexual orientation as a protected class, a step that has been necessary since the United States v. Windsor Supreme Court decision of 2013.

Unfortunately, in typical Washington maleficence, sponsors also add the vague term “gender identity” to all existing civil rights legislation in that bill. While the first is a technical correction, the inclusion of the second is a radical departure from previous concepts of protected classes, and irrevocably erases the biological and fundamental distinction between men and women. The addition in effect would allow someone to declare or demand protected status based on his or her own opinion as to who he or she is, rather than by an objective standard.

To understand the ramifications, recall Rachel Dolezal’s racial appropriation scam, a major news story of 2015. Dolezal infamously posed as a black woman in order to access the preferred hiring that an African American was legally entitled to have. The lengths Dolezal went to were extreme. She went to tanning parlors and got hair extensions. After moving to Spokane, Washington, she assumed the role of a black activist, rising to the position of NAACP chapter head in 2013. She was serving as a chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission representing Spokane’s black community when her ruse unraveled.

Dolezal’s parents had refused to participate in her scam and reported her shenanigans to the press. Dolezal amazingly, retorted that her profound sense of empathy and her abuse at the hands of religiously fundamentalist parents entitled her to be just as “black” as her African American foster siblings.

Dolezal even wrote a book in 2017 defending that assertion In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. A documentary on her story, “The Rachel Divide” by Laura Brownson, details her fraud, the impact that fraud had on her and her family, and her defense of what she calls her “transracial” identity. The documentary and subsequent criticism do not hesitate to discuss her various schemes and frauds, which are remarkably like Warren’s false claims of Native American heritage.

Both women clung to the emotional belief that they were part of a protected class and entitled to the benefits that were legally accorded to these marginalized groups. From their standpoint, a stated subjective belief that you are something means that you are. The proposed Equality Act would make it legal for someone who would not ordinarily be granted protected status, to lay claim to that standing by declaration and belief alone.

Dolezal is a shameless con artist. Yet her ludicrous position illustrates the glaring problem with the Equality Act. Despite Dolezal’s assertions, race is an immutable characteristic. So is sex. Sex is an indisputable physical reality. It is not subject to opinion. Everyone has either an XX chromosome or an XY chromosome makeup, just as they have genetic markers that determine skin color or ethnicity.

Like Dolezal, Warren adopted her native identity as easily as she would don an article of clothing. Dolezal’s “transracial” declaration did not entitle her to scholarships, grants, or jobs simply because she willed it.

Appearing on “The Real,” a daytime talk show, Dolezal annoyed African American comedian Loni Love, one of the shows co-hosts. “I’m black,” Love said. “I can’t be you. I can’t reverse myself.”

Love’s challenge to Dolezal could not be gainsaid: You cannot choose your race. Your race is decided for you.

We need to challenge Warren and the rest of the Democratic field on this proposed change, because it fundamentally renders irrelevant those biological differences between male and female. If that principle became the standard, it could remove the physical distinctions of race- and ethnicity-protected classes as well.

Dolezal and Warren’s attempts to declare and appropriate the identities of historically protected classes were clearly wrong. “Gender identity” is nothing more than a way to steal protections and entitlements to which one has no real claim. A declarative statement of identity nullifies not only the physical distinctions between men and women, but this erasure paves the way to remove other physically immutable traits that are currently afforded protection by statute.

Most anti-discrimination policies work by acknowledging physical distinctions and always have. If you can declare your gender identity, many women who currently need legal protection from discrimination will no longer have it. That is the doomsday scenario the Equality Act marches us toward. We are already tasting the bitter fruit of allowing transgender women and girls to usurp places previously held for women who can’t reverse who they are.

Everyone has heard Ben Shapiro’s “Facts don’t care about your feelings” catch phrase. I believe it has a corollary. Our feelings should care about facts. If there is a singular endemic fault to Warren, and the rest of 2020 field it is the manipulation of emotions to the detriment of truth. The Equality Act is bold and stirs us to believe we are rescuing those who are oppressed. We hear an echo of our Declaration of Independence every time the word “equality” is used. The emotional appeal of this term fraudulently stirs American’s innate sense of justice. This is dangerous.

You cannot create justice for one by depriving others of it. The Equality Act codifies misguided ideology into law, and it is a detriment to advancing human rights in American society. Our daughters are already paying the price in the restroom, in sports, and in the workplace. It’s clear that if the Equality Act becomes law others will soon pay the same price.