On February 25, 2021, HR-5 (called the Equality Act) was passed by the House of Representatives, sending it on its way to the Senate floor. At face value, the bill is presented as a great stride in civil liberty—a call to prohibit discrimination and increase equality of all members of society. Yet beneath its apparently affirmative title, the bill restricts religious liberty and strips persons of the true equality and dignity that belongs to us all as human beings made in the image and likeness of God.

If passed into law, HR-5 would, ironically, impose discriminatory measures against anyone opposed to its flawed understanding of the origin and end of the human person.

While the bill is not expected to pass in the Senate, it brings into sharp relief the ideology of transgenderism which is currently influencing our society—and which is directly opposed to Catholic teaching on true human dignity, true social justice, and the true equality shared by all people, made in God’s image and likeness, as “male and female” (Genesis. 1:27).

In this lesson your students will:

• Explore what Scripture and the Catechism teach about our being made in the image of God, and how our human dignity calls us to treat others.
• Discuss how we can bring Christ’s love to all members of society, seeing everyone we meet as a person deeply loved by God.
• Consider how the Catholic Church calls us to respond to those who oppose the true understanding of the human person and human sexuality.
• Examine what is proposed by HR-5 (the Equality Act), its potential consequences, and upon what faulty understanding of the human person it is based.