What Today’s Insanely Left Democratic Party Is Doing With Virginia Will Scare You

By Ashley Bateman

Virginia Democrats mistake their legislative control as a mandate for extreme liberal social re-engineering — and it shows where the rest of the party is headed.

For the first time in 26 years, Virginians voted a Democrat majority into both the state’s House and Senate. Four weeks into the General Assembly, the new majority is voting in laws restricting parents’ rights, removing religious protections, and disturbing rights traditional to Virginians.

“The aggressive onslaught of hostile legislation is new this year,” said Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia. “Virginia has never even had a public policy discussion about forcing sexual orientation gender identity ideology on the private sector until Democrats gained power in November. In the case of abortion, we fought narrow repeals of abortion law in the past, but it wasn’t until this year that anyone seriously entertained a constitutional amendment addressing the right to abortion.”

With Gov. Ralph Northam’s backing, Virginia passed the so-called Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would repeal multiple protections for women and the unborn, remove restrictions on abortions, and dismantle sensible sex separation in bathrooms, locker rooms, jails, and hospitals. It would also allow minors to abort without parental consent, would remove the ultrasound requirement before an abortion, and would make abortion access a legal right through an amendment to the Virginia Constitution.

New Laws Threaten the First and Second Amendments

“Since there is no evidence of discrimination taking place, the purpose of the so-called nondiscrimination proposals is not to protect anyone, it’s to weaponize the government to discriminate against and harass private businesses and faith-based organizations that have deeply held moral or religious beliefs regarding sexuality and marriage,” Cobb said. “These bills will create Jack Phillips baker and Barronelle Stutzman florist cases across our Commonwealth. Already, West Point, Virginia, teacher Peter Vlaming can no longer teach at his public school because his faith did not permit him to bend a knee to transgender ideology.”

Republican state Sen. Amanda Chase, an outspoken advocate for traditional family values, is extremely concerned about First and Second Amendment violations this session.

“The ERA does nothing for true equality of women but uses women as a political pawn to push the liberal agenda,” Chase said on the floor of the assembly.

full story at https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/07/what-todays-insanely-left-democratic-party-is-doing-with-virginia-will-scare-you/