Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding.

In 2016, HUD published a final rule, the Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual's Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs rule requiring Community Planning and Development- funded single-sex projects ``to provide all individuals, including transgender individuals and other individuals who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, with access to programs, benefits, services, and accommodations in accordance with their gender identity without being subjected to intrusive questioning or being asked to provide documentation.''

This rule prohibits a HUD-funded shelter from providing for single- sex facilities based on an individual's gender at birth. There are other rules that were put in place in the Obama administration, similarly. None of these rules recognize that housing programs, particularly faith-based facilities, ability to distinguish between genders and an individual's marital status; both rules placing vulnerable women at risk.

This administration announced a proposed rule that ``permits shelter providers to consider a range of factors in making such determinations, including: privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs, any relevant considerations under civil rights and nondiscrimination authorities . . . `' I could go on. It is a commonsense rule.

Yet, now, we are sitting here in an appropriations bill when we are supposed to be figuring out how to fund the important, ailing infrastructure of this country, housing and urban development, figure out how to solve the problems in this country, while we have got a border that is being overwhelmed every single day--yes, I am coming back to that because it is the crisis of our day--and now we are turning this into a gender-identity game.

The gentleman from South Carolina is properly trying to protect the ability of this administration to have a commonsense rule to ensure that people are safe when we have got facilities in place and the Federal Government has something to do it with. I applaud him for doing so.

I would ask my Democrat colleagues why we are not getting back to the business of the day, making sure that we have strong infrastructure, strong border security, and doing the job the American people actually sent us to do instead of manufacturing social engineering and gender identities.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding, and I want to thank the gentlewoman from Missouri for her comments. I can't expound upon her eloquent comments much more or the gentleman from South Carolina about the concerns that we have with what has been put in this appropriations bill and why I support the gentleman from South Carolina's amendment to make sure that the Secretary of HUD has the ability to do his job and to do the right thing.

I notice that my friend on the other side of the aisle mentioned the Equality Act. Well, what I am hearing from my constituents in Texas is they are concerned. They are concerned that were the Equality Act to be passed out of the Senate, it would undermine the ability of their daughters to compete. What we are seeing around the country is boys who decide to declare themselves females run in races and make it impossible for girls to compete. This is happening. We see it. It is happening in real time.

I just wonder what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think is being accomplished with an Equality Act that turns on its head the very idea and the very notion of what we have got with respect to the differences between men and women and the ability to recognize that, embrace it, and be able to have women compete in sports.

Here we are in this false name of equality blowing up the ability of secretaries and people in the administration to make commonsense determinations about how to house people, to make tough choices, and to be able to figure out what to do. Heaven forbid they rely upon biological sex to make that determination.

This is why my wife and I, who have been products of public schools K through law school, have our children in a private school because we keep getting our values blown to heck and common sense blown to heck in schools where bathrooms suddenly become social engineering experiments.

That is what we see happening as a result of what is happening in the body and what is happening in an appropriations bill.

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