WASHINGTON, D.C., August 2, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The United States Supreme Court has selected October 8 as the date it will begin hearing oral arguments on whether longstanding anti-discrimination laws should be reinterpreted to cover homosexuality or gender confusion.

The case will consolidate three separate cases into one: that of a skydiving instructor who was fired after informing a customer he was gay; a Christian funeral home that fired a male employee who insisted on dressing as a woman on the job, and a county child welfare services coordinator who was fired after his employer learned he was gay. All hinge on whether Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act extends its nondiscrimination protections to the categories of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

The Supreme Court has set October 8 as the day oral arguments will begin, Washington Blade, a homosexual paper, reports. Attorney Chase Strangio of the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) declared it would be “one of the biggest days in LGBTQ legal history”:

If you don’t know what is happening on October 8th I urge you to find out. It will be one of the biggest days in LGBTQ legal history and we have a lot to do to prepare. Our fight is at SCOTUS. Our lives on the line. Don’t look away. — Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) July 28, 2019

In March, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Title VII’s prohibition of “employment discrimination based on...sex” covers not just biological sex but whatever sex an individual feels him or herself to be. The Trump administration disagrees, and 16 states have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reverse the 6th Circuit’s decision.

“Unless and until Congress affirmatively acts, our Constitution leaves to the States the authority to determine which protections, or not, should flow to individuals based on gender identity,” the brief argues. “The term ‘gender identity,’ or as the Sixth Circuit labels it, ‘transgender’ and ‘transitioning status,’ are not found in the text or legislative history of Title VII,” and at the time of its adoption, “gender identity” referred to “social and cultural roles” rather than to physiological reality or psychological self-image.

Democrats in Congress are also currently attempting to achieve the same result legislatively. The so-called Equality Act, which passed the U.S. House in May, would amend the Civil Rights Act to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” among expressly recognized nondiscrimination categories in both its employment and “public accommodations” provisions. The Equality Act isn’t expected to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, but will be an issue in next year’s elections.

Whether the LGBT lobby succeeds via a new law or by judicial fiat, conservatives warn that the change would do far more than merely protect homosexual or gender-confused Americans from tangible harm.

Rather, it would likely force other Americans such as photographers, florists, and bakers to participate in same-sex “weddings”; force employers and businesses to fund practices like sex-change treatments regardless of their own values or policies; and to force women and girls to share sleeping quarters, showers, changing areas, and restrooms with gender-confused males (or “cis” men merely claiming trans status to get easy access to vulnerable women).

Since President Donald Trump’s nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were confirmed, the Supreme Court has delivered social conservatives a modest victory on anti-Christian discrimination and allowed the Trump administration’s ban on transgender soldiers to take effect, but neither was a definitive ruling on the core legal questions of either case. The October case will be the new justices’ first major test on LGBT issues.