On Tuesday, Judge James E. Plowman Jr. of the Circuit Court of Loudoun County, Virginia, granted an injunction to reinstate physical education teacher Byron Cross to his post in that county’s school system. His offense leading to the suspension? Mr. Cross opposed on First Amendment grounds a regulation forcing school system employees into kowtowing to student’s demands to use their preferred pronouns regardless of their sex.
Mr. Cross cited his religious belief that the God created us male and female, that he had a right to instruct his students of his own opinions of reality, and that his right of free speech was in play as well. The judge concurred and restored him to his position, by means of an injunction for the moment, until the case can be tried in court.
I appreciate the decision rendered by the judge. As the country has never adopted English as its official language, the rights of any individual user of that language must be upheld. But in spite of that, I do believe that long-term it was and will be an inadequate move in spite of its correct view of the teacher’s rights under the First Amendment.
The decision of the judge places the plaintiff over against an unrecognized distortion of our common language having no other support than the coercive mob mentality demanding its recognition. Now everyone so accused must be placed on their defensive, as they are compelled to assume a posture of defending their rights, but defending against what? Is there some empowered entity dictating that an individual’s “preferred pronouns” be regarded and utilized in the speech of another, and everyone found in violation of that empowered specter regarding the language that we speak must file suit in order to protect their rights, or our common language? Again, against what, or who?
The very idea that this self-centered ‘pronoun’ silliness may one day waste the time of the Supreme Court of the United States appears ludicrous at first blush. So what is it that I find so troubling? For one, although English is not the official language of the nation’s people, it is the official language in which all government and legal documents are to be written, this for the common accessibility of all. Imagine, if every lawyer, every elected official, you get the idea, decided to utilize whatever pronouns they preferred in their work, and in the documents pertaining to the public? The controversy will disappear in no time. That being the necessary case, in what are we educating our students to take their place in this world indoctrinated to make use of an alien language distortion? This is but one concern… What are the others yet to arise, and be laid bare?
Civilization is at issue, as I described earlier in my piece of 23 May entitled, Pentecost, Pronouns and Babel Redux. The wantonness of this attempt at the destruction of the very language that we use to communicate is exceeded by the degree of personal or cultic self-righteousness underlying and motivating this pronoun heresy. Indeed, the heresy has at its root the sin of self-righteousness. The claim is that I as a private entity may alter the basic grammatical rules of a commonly spoken language so as to confound its clarity. And not merely that, but I as that independent entity may demand of my superiors and even those whose job it is to teach me that they kowtow to my distortions without question. And if they refuse, I am entitled to file a complaint officially, or have them destroyed unofficially, because my position regarding the issue is sacrosanct and there is no objective standard to prevent me from doing what I please, no matter the lives of others around me and the preposterous enormity of the task that I impose on others to learn the preferred pronouns of every individual we meet or read or interact with verbally.
The sin of self-righteousness is destructive as it never gathers, but distinguishes so as to either divide socially or even become cultic. Conflict is the inevitable result.
Could the judge have told the arrogant student that we speak the English language in this country? I leave that to the lawyers, but I doubt that there is some legal basis for such a decision as it has been raised in the past without result. It needs to be raised again, as now the issue has less to do with ‘e pluribus unum’ and much more to do with the willful destruction of any language spoken in this country. So the question then becomes one of whether any particular user of any language may distort its basic grammatical and syntactical rules. Enough of that allowed and chaos in communication is the inescapable result.
We need to decide on our linguistic standards, once and for all, then place the detractors in the position of defending their rights to distort them…
Father David+