Rep. Greg Steube seeks to restore sanity and common English grammar to at least one part of the Biden administration.
The Sarasota Republican this week introduced the Preserve Military Recognition Act, whose aim is to “reverse the new Department of Defense Manual of Military Decorations and Awards rule requiring the use of a gender-neutral pronoun in military awards,” Steube’s office said in a press release.
The congressman’s staff noted that as of Aug. 7, the Defense Department’s manual governing military awards “now requires the use of the gender-neutral pronoun ‘themself’ instead of ‘himself’ or ‘herself’ in joint personal military decoration citations.”
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The rule applies to several awards including: Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, and Joint Meritorious Unit Award.
Some of those awards rank just below the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Silver Star in order of importance in America’s system of recognizing troops for stellar service.
In its push to appease LGBTQ activists, the Biden administration actually turned the clock back nearly 500 years.
Canada’s Justice Department, in its agency style guide, notes that the term “themself” was acceptable until as the third-person person plural reflexive pronoun until about 1540, and had essentially disappeared from the English language by around 1570.
Yet the term is too nutty for even the left-wing, pro-LGBTQ Canadian government.
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“Although some current dictionaries, for example, The New Oxford Dictionary of English, state that themself has re-emerged in recent years when used to refer to a singular gender-neutral noun or pronoun …, they label it as ‘rare’ or ‘disputed’ or ‘not widely accepted in standard English,’” the Canadian guide notes. “Other dictionaries such as Webster’s Third New International Dictionary do not mention it at all.”
“In short, although there is some acknowledgement that this form is occasionally used today, informally, and that it may perhaps be a trend to watch, its use does not seem widespread enough to justify advocating it in legislative texts for the time being,” the guide continued, adding that the term should be avoided.
Congressman Steube, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, agrees.
“The Department of Defense’s new rule is yet another example of the Biden administration infiltrating our military with leftist propaganda,” Steube said in a statement.
“Attempting to wipe out any sign of gender as the men and women who honorably serve our country receive awards is insulting. The Biden administration’s liberal policies are to blame for our military recruitment and retention issues.”
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