The 117th Congress rules bill, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), proposes to be “gender neutral,” including removing gender terms such as “father, mother, son, daughter” from official congressional documents. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) derided it as “stupid.
On Friday, Pelosi and rules committee Chairman James McGovern announced that the new rules proposal would be “gender neutral to respect all gender identities. The motion will be voted on next Monday (January 4).
For example, according to the bill, the following words will be removed: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, nephew, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, (foreign) grandson, (foreign) granddaughter, etc.”
And to eliminate the difference between men and women, “seamen” will be changed from “seamen” to “seafarer” and “chairman” will be changed from “chairman” to “chair”.
Some left-leaning members of the House cheered the new rules, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who said the changes would allow Democrats to “work for a bolder agenda.
But that drew a lot of scorn from Republican conservatives, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy openly mocking Pelosi’s proposal. In a tweet, he retweeted the proposal to eliminate gender designations, commenting, “This is stupid. Signed: a father, son and brother.”
This is stupid.
Signed,
- A father, son, and brother https://t.co/bG9SlRAy6N
- Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) January 2, 2021
The proposal sparked controversy in American society and ridicule from the right-leaning media, with the Daily Caller posting a sarcastic retort: “As you can see, Congress is really focused on the major problems of America.”
Within the new House of Representatives, Democrats hold 222 seats and Republicans 213 seats. Although Democratic members of the new House renominated Pelosi as speaker, the party lost 10 seats from the previous session, the smallest gap between the two parties’ seats in 20 years.
In the January 2019 vote on a new speaker, 15 Democratic lawmakers opposed Pelosi at that time. Current Democrats Conor Lamb, Jared Golden and Elissa Slotkin have all said they will not vote for Pelosi.
House Republican Leader McCarthy, who is also running for the speakership, is expected to have the support of almost all Republican lawmakers. At the same time, some Democratic lawmakers cannot return because of the epidemic, so it remains to be seen who will win in the January election for the new speaker.
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