Collins statement on markup of H.R. 5

"This committee has heard how this bill would marginalize an almost endless spectrum of Americans, but I fear we have not listened. Today, as we recall who this bill will harm and how, I note it’s not too late to show courage. Everyone on this dais can listen sincerely, take heart and oppose legislation based in political theory, not scientific reality. If my Democrat colleagues do advance this misguided bill, they must admit this legislative win creates millions of losers. Intellectual honesty requires us to count the cost of H.R. 5."

WASHINGTON — Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, made the following opening statement at today’s markup of H.R. 5. Below are the remarks as prepared. Ranking Member Collins: During one week this April, Customs and Border Patrol apprehended over 15,000 family units at our southwest border. Immigration loopholes are causing illegal immigration to skyrocket and exhausting resources meant to serve migrants and Americans. Not only are Democrats ignoring the humanitarian crisis at the border as children are exploited, but they are focusing their energy on promoting unscientific policies that actively hurt women, girls and boys. Mr. Chairman, this committee has heard from experts how H.R. 5 would destroy female sports, endanger vulnerable women and promote sterilization of children in a misguided bid to privilege the rights of a few over those of the vast majority of Americans. This committee has heard how this bill would marginalize an almost endless spectrum of Americans, but I fear we have not listened. Today, as we recall who this bill will harm and how, I note it’s not too late to show courage. Everyone on this dais can listen sincerely, take heart and oppose legislation based in political theory, not scientific reality. If my Democrat colleagues do advance this misguided bill, they must admit this legislative win creates millions of losers. Intellectual honesty requires us to count the cost of H.R. 5. Women have won necessary protections against discrimination and physical harm, but H.R. 5 puts 166 million American women at the mercy of any biological man who identifies, at any moment, as a woman. Do you want to empower an intoxicated man to enter an abused women’s shelter, to re-victimize them by cozying his cot next to theirs and sharing their showers? That may not be H.R. 5’s explicit goal, but it’s precisely the kind of consequence this bill would have. The biological differences between the sexes remains scientific and certain. By giving any man identifying as a woman access to protected spaces and statuses, H.R. 5 — in the words of a Women’s Liberation Front leader — nullifies “women and girls as a coherent legal category worthy of civil rights protection.” H.R. 5 doesn’t just marginalize women, it sacrifices their health and safety and demonizes them if they object. The costs are already clear in athletics, where biological women will overwhelmingly lose to biological men who compete as women. This week, Martina Navratilova joined other elite female athletes in writing, “The evidence is unequivocal that . . . there will always be significant numbers of boys and men who would beat the best girls and women in head-to-head competition. Claims to the contrary are simply a denial of science.” Sport, they write, “is a public space where the relevance of sex is undeniable, and where pretending that it is irrelevant, as the Equality Act suggests, will cause the very harm Title IX was enacted to address.” Listen to a key point here. Proponents of H.R. 5 call people who oppose it ignorant, bigoted, oppressive or hateful. I will not make similar character assassinations against my friends across the aisle. Our best intentions sometimes lead us astray, so much so we’re marking up a bill that would clearly hurt women, children and athletes, in an effort to support people who identify as transgender and have often experienced much suffering. It’s important to listen to their stories, including the transgender girls and boys this bill is meant to help — because we may be hurting them by ignoring the painful consequences of doctors prescribing hormones and performing major surgeries on adolescents based on gender identity rather than biological gender or medical condition. H.R. 5 would actually compel doctors to do this. This bill would empower adolescents — who can’t decide what college major to pursue — to force doctors to administer hormones that could render these children sterile and conduct irreversible surgeries. After the H.R. 5 hearing, we heard more stories of parents who have watched their children deteriorate physically and emotionally as they transition away from their biological sex. Families are still begging Congress to listen before we leap. Finally, H.R. 5 endangers the First Amendment rights of every single American. Because this bill makes no provision for sincerely held religious belief, it would criminalize fundamental tenets of major world religions, including Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Biological sex is a scientific reality, yet H.R. 5 would target faith traditions that acknowledge it as such and want to live their own lives accordingly. Today, we continue to listen to all Americans, including the LGBT community, and recognize many within that community have concerns about this legislation. H.R. 5 would marginalize and could endanger millions of American women, undermine fundamental American rights to faith in both religion and science and actively put children at risk by medicalizing them in harmful, permanent ways. We want to listen to people today, not hurt them. H.R. 5 would most certainly harm millions of Americans, including the people it means to help.