Proposed changes to House Rules would “respect all gender identities” by removing specific terms such as mother and father, son and daughter and aunt and uncle.
Instead, under the proposed changes, only gender-neutral terms such as “parent”, “child”, “sibling” and “sibling of the parents” would be allowed in the text of the house rules.
The proposed changes – including the creation of a House “Bureau of Diversity and Inclusion” – will be voted on after the House meets Sunday for the new 117th Congress.
Another rule change would prevent Republicans from changing a bill at the last minute, the Washington Examiner reported.
Instead, such proposed changes would send the bill back to committee and effectively kill it, the examiner noted.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this is necessary so that last-minute legislative changes – known as Motions to Recommit – are “no longer used to hijack the legislative process for political play.”
The new rules will make the House “the most inclusive in history,” Pelosi said in announcing the proposed changes.
But the gender-neutralizing movement – a nod to the transgender and non-binary community – has been widely derided on social media.
“As you can see, Congress really has its finger on the pulse of America,” said the Conservative Daily caller snapped on Twitter.
“Is this some sort of scheme to create confusion through eclipse?” @tweeting_chance responded to the tweet. “Don’t we already have enough of that in our legislation?”
Other changes would remove the privileges of former House members convicted of crimes related to their House service or election and would make it a Code of Official Conduct violation for a house member or employee to disclose a whistleblower’s identity .
House members and their employees would also be prohibited from distributing “manipulated media”, including “deepfakes”.