Every lie you endorse, even by omission, weakens you and stains your soul. Which is what you’re doing when you put your “preferred pronouns” in your email signature.
Very well said, Deion! The Left has a lot of practice backing us into corners where we can either agree with them...or advertise our "bigotry". I say call their bluff!
A very timely and important post, Deion. I think you do a great job highlighting how something as seemingly innocuous as adding three words to one's signature is really so important. I think one of the reasons that this will be a stumbling block for many in the years to come is that the narrative is so well constructed around it--to provide one's pronouns is pitched as compassion and kindness, something which no good-hearted person (and certainly no Christian) would be opposed to. Furthermore, it is such a little thing; you are not being asked to say that transgenderism or non-binarism is correct, merely to say what you always say, that you are a man or a woman, a he/him/his or a she/her/hers. The pitch uses virtue to promote vice, and disguises radicalism behind mundanity. For many it will be hard to say no to requests, explicit or implicit, to just go along with things; it is easy to list pronouns (I use masculine pronouns in reference to myself all the time, after all), and if it will ease another person's pain or fear then why not? Isn't it true that I often check the box marked "Mr." on forms, rather than "Mrs." or "Ms.", and doesn't this indicate that there is nothing unusual or sinister about the current request? I think your emphasis on the radical motives of the requesters and the importance of telling the truth are critical to navigating this issue. When you point out that this is being asked not because it just makes people feel included, or eases workplace discussion, or avoids awkward actual misgendering of people (such as mistakenly thinking that the person listed as "Tracy Smith" on the attendance list is a woman when he is actually a man--a mistake caused by the ambiguity of the name "Tracy" and not by any actual ambiguity about whether human beings are inherently male or female), but is in fact being asked so as to draft everyone onto the side of the radical and incorrect beliefs about gender that suggest that a man can feel like a woman and that this actually makes him a woman, or that a person may believe that she actually does not have a gender and that this has somehow resulted in her becoming a plurality, you place the problem into a different, more accurate, perspective. If I place my pronouns in my bio, even to reinforce the absolutely true statement that I am in fact a man, then I am going along with a lie. And if I give succor to the lie, then I am failing to witness to the truth; I cannot be neutral between truth and falsehood. These points that you make will hopefully help Christians to see why the situation is not so simple as a choice between being kind to others or being too stubborn even to type three extra words; there are real stakes, not just civilizationally but spiritually, to doing or not doing as we are bid in this arena. Thank you for writing this.
Very well said, Deion! The Left has a lot of practice backing us into corners where we can either agree with them...or advertise our "bigotry". I say call their bluff!
A very timely and important post, Deion. I think you do a great job highlighting how something as seemingly innocuous as adding three words to one's signature is really so important. I think one of the reasons that this will be a stumbling block for many in the years to come is that the narrative is so well constructed around it--to provide one's pronouns is pitched as compassion and kindness, something which no good-hearted person (and certainly no Christian) would be opposed to. Furthermore, it is such a little thing; you are not being asked to say that transgenderism or non-binarism is correct, merely to say what you always say, that you are a man or a woman, a he/him/his or a she/her/hers. The pitch uses virtue to promote vice, and disguises radicalism behind mundanity. For many it will be hard to say no to requests, explicit or implicit, to just go along with things; it is easy to list pronouns (I use masculine pronouns in reference to myself all the time, after all), and if it will ease another person's pain or fear then why not? Isn't it true that I often check the box marked "Mr." on forms, rather than "Mrs." or "Ms.", and doesn't this indicate that there is nothing unusual or sinister about the current request? I think your emphasis on the radical motives of the requesters and the importance of telling the truth are critical to navigating this issue. When you point out that this is being asked not because it just makes people feel included, or eases workplace discussion, or avoids awkward actual misgendering of people (such as mistakenly thinking that the person listed as "Tracy Smith" on the attendance list is a woman when he is actually a man--a mistake caused by the ambiguity of the name "Tracy" and not by any actual ambiguity about whether human beings are inherently male or female), but is in fact being asked so as to draft everyone onto the side of the radical and incorrect beliefs about gender that suggest that a man can feel like a woman and that this actually makes him a woman, or that a person may believe that she actually does not have a gender and that this has somehow resulted in her becoming a plurality, you place the problem into a different, more accurate, perspective. If I place my pronouns in my bio, even to reinforce the absolutely true statement that I am in fact a man, then I am going along with a lie. And if I give succor to the lie, then I am failing to witness to the truth; I cannot be neutral between truth and falsehood. These points that you make will hopefully help Christians to see why the situation is not so simple as a choice between being kind to others or being too stubborn even to type three extra words; there are real stakes, not just civilizationally but spiritually, to doing or not doing as we are bid in this arena. Thank you for writing this.