The Totalitarian Use of Language
Pedro de Varzi. The Holy Trinity, 1946.
The Federal Government’s General Services Administration (GSA) has issued a new final rule, “Federal Management Regulation; Updating the FMR with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Language,” that will become effective October 21, 2024. It is one more example of the Biden-Harris Administration’s strong push to promote transgenderism. This federal rule is presented as “preventing and combating discrimination,” but what it really does is marginalize and discriminate against those who affirm a Judeo-Christian anthropology and accept the scientific fact that individuals cannot change their biological sex or gender. Moreover, the attempt to do so is a revolt against the created order of humanity.
The GSA has replaced gender-specific pronouns, as he, she, his, or her, with other terms deemed more “inclusive” and “respectful.” This is exactly the kind of verbal engineering that precedes persecution of those who disagree. Controlling the language that is used officially means declaring what is the “standard and accepted usage”; and those who do not conform are then likely to be forced to take different kinds of “reeducation courses” and could even be in danger of losing their jobs.
It has become increasingly common in the corporate world for employees to be subjected to Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) training or policies. Something like 97% of US companies have one or more DEI initiatives. There has been a certain backlash against this modern trend as critics rightly point out that reverse discrimination against individuals from certain groups is not just. From a Catholic moral perspective, one cannot remedy an injustice committed in the past by taking an unjust action in the present. We have a longstanding prohibition on doing evil that good may come of it.
Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris Administration on its very first day in office issued several executive orders, including Executive Order 13988 of January 20, 2021 (Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation). It has been the aggressive policy of this administration to promote the gender ideology that recent popes have denounced. Pope Francis has condemned the gender theory that identities are fluid, transient, flexible, or changeable and warns of the threat of a “society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”
The administration has also created a “Government-Wide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Initiative and Strategic Plan,” or DEIA in its short form. There has been a constant stream of actions and propaganda for different sexual orientations and gender identities, usually encapsulated in the acronym LGBTQ+ or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, gender non-conforming, non-binary, etc., by the White House and different agencies of the federal government. This has gone very far, including national security policy. The Director of National Intelligence was instructed “to mitigate any barriers in security clearance and background investigation processes for LGBTQ+ employees and applicants, in particular transgender and gender non-conforming and non-binary employees and applicants.” They also pushed for the creation or expansion of gender non-binary facilities and restrooms in federally owned and leased workplaces. Biden-Harris demanded LGBTQ+ employees and their families receive equitable access to health care and health insurance coverage that explicitly includes unethical “comprehensive gender-affirming” medical interventions to “transition” from one gender to another or to maintain this artificial construct with cross-sex hormones, surgeries, etc.
The head of each federal agency was told to take steps to foster an “inclusive environment” in their agencies. This meant creating non-binary gender marker and pronoun options. Here again the danger that the DEIA policy might result in conscience rights violations is very high. It is not ethically acceptable to require an employee to use pronouns that are not biologically accurate simply because an individual demands it. A biological male who wants to be referred to using “she/her” cannot impose this usage, and neither can an employer. If he does, it forces others to speak an untruth, a clear ethical violation of his or her right to live a life of integrity. Coercing people to lie was, and is, the common practice in totalitarian regimes. These types of egregious human rights violations are frequently decried by dissidents and outside observers.
In summary, we should not complacently think that government administrators changing language or forms of speech is something that is simply irritating. These practices are ethically threatening. Standardizing nonbinary pronouns and gender ideology terms in the official medical codes used by health care professionals poses a real danger. The radical gender ideology has a totalitarian tendency. Those imbued with these ideas do not have a “live and let live” attitude and will not stop short of authoritarian victory. They accuse those who refuse to knuckle under to their demands of being hateful and dangerous enemies. It is, as we have seen, a rather easy step to go from verbal to physical violence. We are right to worry that the legacy of the Biden-Harris Administration’s gender activism will be a strong clash between mutually exclusive worldviews. I find it sobering that the political rhetoric commonly used today could lead to unchecked persecution of people with a traditional understanding of human nature and sexuality if their constitutional rights are not re-affirmed by the highest courts in the land.
Joseph Meaney received his PhD in bioethics from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome. His doctoral program was founded by the late Elio Cardinal Sgreccia and linked to the medical school and Gemelli teaching hospital. His dissertation topic was Conscience and Health Care: A Bioethical Analysis. Dr. Meaney earned his master’s in Latin American studies, focusing on health care in Guatemala, from the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from the University of Dallas with a BA in history and a concentration in international studies. The Benedict XVI Catholic University in Trujillo, Peru, awarded Dr. Meaney an honorary visiting professorship. The University of Dallas bestowed on him an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters in 2022.