National Review is reporting that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent an official cable to State Department employees in early February warning them not use basic human words like “mother/father,” “son/daughter,” and “husband/wife” because making assumptions about someone’s gender identity (which is not a thing) “can be problematic” and sends a “harmful, exclusionary message.”

National Review has the text of the official cable and confirmed its authenticity. A copy of the communique has not been found online at press time. The State Department entitled the directive, “Modeling DEIA: Gender Identity Best Practices” with the express purpose to “increase understanding of gender identity and provide guidance on gender identity language and best practices that support an inclusive work environment.”

DEIA is the federal government’s acronym for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility,” from an executive order given on June 25, 2021.

National Review quotes extensively from the official government cable,

The cable also instructs staffers to use “gender-neutral language whenever possible.” Problematic terms like “manpower,” “you guys,” “ladies and gentlemen” and even “mother/father,” “son/daughter,” and “husband/wife” should be avoided. Better to use terms like “labor force,” “everyone,” “folks,” “you all,” and “parent,” “child,” and “spouse” or partner” instead…

They continue,

“When speaking, avoid using phrases like ‘brave men and women on the front lines,’” the cable adds, suggesting that staffers “use more specific language such as ‘brave first responders,’ ‘brave soldiers,’ or ‘brave DS [Diplomatic Security] agents.’”

This is beyond Orwellian. That inclusive work environment means these federal government employees can no longer speak meaningfully and sensibly about what it means to be human as male and female. They can no longer speak sensibly about the family, which each of us comes from. It tramples the fact that every person is someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister, mother or father, or husband or wife. Anthony Blinken has just erased humanity itself from State Department communications in the service of DEI ideology.

National Review‘s article properly notes, “Some State Department staffers have questioned why Blinken is spending time promoting far-left gender activism at critical junctures in the raging wars in Ukraine and Gaza.”

National Review explains the baseless, anti-scientific ideology behind all of this,

The cable says that gender is a social construct and that gender identity is a person’s “innermost concept of self as masculine, feminine, a blend of both, or neither,” which “may or may not correspond with one’s sex assigned at birth.”

All of this is demonstrably false.

Gender is not a social construct. It is a word that clearly refers to sex and the procreative ability of male and female. The word “gender” issues from the Proto-Indo-European root gen– or gene-. It fundamentally references the creation and begetting of new human beings, as in, to generate or engender, i.e., mother/father, son/daughter, brother/sister, boy/girl, man/woman.

This root, gene, is also interestingly associated with the Latin gonos, from which we get our English word gonad. Of course, these are the uniquely determinative, wholly binary parts of our anatomy that cannot do what they do in human generation without their cooperative union with the body of the other gender. Gender refers to that which is inherently heterosexual and creates humanity, the binarity of male and female.

Gender is a biological fact, not a social construct. Our government needs to go back to school.

And so-called “gender identity” does not exist. It is wholly made-up concept thanks to gender ideology and the new belief system of transgenderism. Everyone is either male or female, determined by our procreative potential as humans that produce either large or small gametes: ova or sperm. We are our procreative potential, not our subjective “identity.”

As leftist, feminist Kara Dansky explains in her important book The Abolition of Sex,

Here is the truth we cannot speak: “gender identity” does not exist in any real, material sense and “transgender” is simply a made-up concept to justify all kinds of atrocities.

She is exactly right. This is the false dogma our nation’s State Department is now pushing. It is the abolition of male and female, mother and father, son and daughter, husband and wife because it is the erasure of humanity itself. It is an atrocity that no one should obey in anyway. Not for employment. Not for public acceptance. Not for kindness. Not to just get along.

Secretary Blinken has, as recently as just a few months ago, publicly violated his own directive by proudly referring on Veteran’s Day to “the brave men and women who served our country.”

Yes, it is impossible to obey your own rules when you are just making them up as you go to satisfy baseless DEI ideologies that deny humanity itself. But that is exactly what our nation’s State Department is now demanding and it is deeply wrong.

Related articles and resources:

Why Christians Can’t Avoid the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue

Why Focus on the Family Cares About the Gender Issue?

Yes, Sexuality and Gender Are Undeniable Gospel Issues

Are Sex and Gender Different Things?

A Singularly Christian View of the Transgender Problem

Transgender Resources

What Are Male and Female in God’s Story?

 

Image from Shutterstock.