Right On: Transgender newspeak a threat to constitutional protection

November 7, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

Astonishingly, this quote from George Orwell’s novel “1984” is being brought to life today in California. Transgender newspeak is also alive and well in New York City, Virginia and in public school textbooks across the country.

For most progressives, gender is neither binary nor biological. It’s a mental state, an individual choice. For them, the best way to control your “thoughtcrimes” about gender is to begin by controlling your words.

Never a state to tolerate “thoughtcrime,” California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation last year threatening jail time for health care professionals who “willfully and repeatedly” refuse to use a patient’s preferred pronouns.

New York City’s Commission on Human Rights issued guidelines advising employers, landlords and business owners who intentionally use the wrong pronoun with transgender workers and tenants that they face potential fines of as much as $250,000.

Embrace transgender newspeak or take your pick: jail time in California or a huge fine in New York City.

More subtly, Virginia’s Fairfax County public school system eliminated the phrase “biological gender” from its family life curriculum, replacing it with “sex assigned at birth.”

Across the country, educators and their textbooks are telling students that gender is a spectrum, that individuals can choose to be anywhere along it. Most parents are not aware of this stealth transgender newspeak aimed at their children. And even when they are, many districts don’t allow their children to opt out.

Orwell saw this coming: “We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us. … We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. Within twenty years at most, the huge and simple question ‘Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?’ will have ceased once and for all to be answerable.”

We all use words that reflect our views on many topics. Using the phrase “affirmative action” indicates one worldview; saying instead “racial preferences” shows another.

When discussing abortion, the word “fetus” is a common pro-choice phrase while “baby” is used by those with pro-life beliefs. Use either phrase in public discourse and listeners know your point of view.

Many of those with strong pro-life views are motivated by their religious beliefs. Likewise many with religious convictions see gender as God-given, biological and binary. For them, to be required to state otherwise is tantamount to idol worship.

The First Amendment’s free exercise of religion is needlessly and intentionally being subverted. It’s easy to characterize transgender newspeak as hardly more than forced conversion to a state religion.

The Supreme Court held in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) a student’s right to refuse to salute an American flag even on nonreligious grounds. Justice Robert H. Jackson declared: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Yet this is exactly what forced reference to someone else as “ze,” “sie,” “hir,” “co,” “ev,” “xe,” “thon” or “they” entails. Feel free to use these pronouns out of common courtesy. But when government compels their use, it is prescribing “politics, religion or other matters of opinion” in defiance of the Constitution.

Philosopher John Locke wrote: “Words in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them.” If government can compel the use of certain words, it controls thought and forces those who differ into silence. That clearly is the goal of transgender newspeak advocates.

We can have compassion for those who struggle with gender identity. At the same time, we must reject the progressive impulse to eliminate words from public discourse to which they object.

Controlling words in California and New York City is the first step toward criminalizing what George Orwell called “thoughtcrime.” If allowed to stand, it will be progressives’ first step toward dismantling Constitutional protections we all too often take for granted.

Orwell’s novel “1984” was written to expose the evils of totalitarianism and Communism. While today’s progressives see themselves battling for individual freedom, their tactics and actions smack of the totalitarian evils they claim to oppose.

The next time you hear today’s Republican administration called fascist, think of leftist mobs intimidating Republican legislators, think of Antifa attacking passersby in downtown Portland, Oregon, and think of Hilary Clinton defending threats and harassments.

Progressive transgender newspeak clearly violates Justice Jackson’s admonition that “that no official…can force citizens to confess by word” their faith in this new secular religion.

Stand by for a case sure to come to a Supreme Court that respects the Constitution as written.

Howard Sierer is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: hsierer@stgeorgeutah.com

Twitter: @STGnews