“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.” (George Orwell, 1984)

It was only a few years ago that everyone knew what a man was and what a woman was. Addressing a woman with female pronouns and speaking to men with male pronouns was commonsense, polite, and normal. In Victoria today, this is no longer the case.

The Victorian Government has recently revised its LGBTIQ+ Inclusive Language Guide for public servants.

Gendered titles such as Mister or Miss should be avoided. Referring to husband or wife has been deemed inappropriate. Such language has been deemed exclusivist.

According to the story in the Herald Sun, 

some judges are refusing to use “gendered” titles like “mister”, instead referring to people before them in court as “citizen” or “plaintiff”.

We know ‘Citizen’ worked really well for the French Revolution, so why not here in Victoria!?

There is nothing more welcoming and personal than to address people by impersonal pronouns. I’m sure we would appreciate a Government worker make introductions by asking, are you a woman or a man or…?

The guide to Victorian queer theory contradicts itself in two glaring ways.

First of all, the guide acknowledges that most men use “he” and most women use “she”. The fact is, almost all men use “he” and almost all women use “she”, but according to the guide there is no “normal”. If 99%, 98%, or 95% cannot be considered a norm, I don’t know what can. One notes how politicians frequently use numbers to establish a mandate and to define moral norms. Isn’t that what happened with the same sex marriage plebiscite in 2017, where 61.6% of respondents supported a change of definition? 

Secondly,  “A report on the strategy said an appendix of “Language & Terms” had been removed because “wording and understanding in this space changes incredibly quickly, and the appendix would soon have been out of date”.

In other words, the Guide that instructs 300,000 employees how to address people cannot even define its own terms because the meaning of words is constantly changing. Doesn’t that communicate a rather obvious issue with their approach? 

How insulting to men and women that you can no longer address them as such. Isn’t rather demeaning to ignore the fact that a woman is a woman? Imagine the approaching the desk at the public swimming pool and you ask for the changing room. The employee responds by asking, ‘how do you identify?’

Let’s assume that at least some of the persons involved in writing this Guide are trying their best to look out for people and to avoid injury and insult. Good intentions is not the definition of what is good or right. Daniel Andrews and his legion of bureaucrats are not saving humanity, they are tearing human identity and dignity asunder. 

What happens with single sex schools? What happens to women’s sport? What about prisons? What happens with gender quotas? Where individuals decide that they don’t identify as male or female but as one of growing list of alternative genders, how do they fit into all of the above contexts? 

The absurdity of this Guide means we can no longer trust our eyes and the facts we see. No longer can we depend on common sense. Biology is to be ignored (which as you can imagine creates all kinds of problems), instead public servants are told to assume that each person’s self identification is authentic and accurate. 

Ultimately gender and sex become meaningless categories, which of course is the end game in Queer theory. Names are an infringement on personal freedom, which ultimately leaves parents with zero permission to name their own children, let alone presuming what their child’s sex and gender is. Does our baby have a penis? Apparently such realities are irrelevant. What is their name? We have to wait until they are old enough to decide their gender preference and then they can choose their own name.

This Guide to language is of course a one way street. The Government’s latest move is the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. 

If a child is wrestling with their gender identity, this Government is preparing to imprison mum and dad if they don’t consent to filling their child with hormone replacement therapy. These children can taken away from their family and brought the child into the loving care of the State who will gladly abuse the physical body in aid of this unyielding new ideology. 

A Church leader who explores the Christian view of sexuality with an individual can be charged and jailed for 10 years. Should a pastor or priest dare pray in accord with say 1 Corinthians 6, they can also face a prison term or a fine of $200,000.

All this would be hilarious if it were not so serious. This new cultural imperialism will not lead to clarity, it produces mountains of confusion. This is not dignity building, it is demoralising as we create a generation of young Victorians who are taught not to trust their own biology or even their parents. Eventually, we will be left with a society where we can no longer identify anyone or know anything to be truly true. The further my State of Victoria entertains this project, the more we harm ourselves. We are losing our grip on what it means to be human as we exchanged the soul for acceptance at the table of identity politics. Perhaps, the advise given to judges is correct, all we will be left with is a label, “Citizen”. 

Students of history understand that when cultures abandon moral goods, the trajectory can persist for extended periods. The road that our society is making didn’t start last week. It’s a project that is now many decades old, and while the final kilometres of this road are yet to be made, the direction should concern all of us. 

These ages of experimentation are detrimental to the lives of the people who find themselves living through it, which is what makes them so dangerous. This current negation of man and woman effects real people in real time. However, reality cannot be subdued forever. 

When the cultural influencers of Jesus’ day argued over marriage and tried to subvert the ‘normalcy’ of the Scriptures, Jesus responded, 

“Haven’t you read…that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female”.

Eventually we will return to the paradigm of Genesis 1. For now, in Victoria, we need to be prepare for a long and windy road trip. We pray that God brings us back sooner than later.

None of this is to ignore people in our community for whom heterosexuality or binary gender identity are things that don’t sit easily with them (or not at all). These individuals should be shown compassion and treated with respect. Indeed, I would argue that the good news of Jesus Christ offers greater hope and life and freedom than the constantly changing deluge that is queer theory. Remember the encounter of the Samaritan woman with Jesus. The outsider who had transgressed the norms of marriage was welcomed and loved by Jesus, not because of her background but on account of Christ’s own character. Jesus did not approve of her past, he extended to her a future,

“a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24)