Sadly, having large Republican majorities in a legislature does not guarantee sound public policy. A case in point comes from the current session in Texas, where conservatives are trying to stamp out the left-wing race and gender ideologies that have been institutionalized at the University of Texas.
Texas SB 17 would defund and prohibit DEI departments, officers, employees, training, and so on in Texas state colleges and universities. The bill has the Senate, but for some reason it has been stalled in the Texas House. There might be progress, however, as it has now been announced that SB 17 will be heard by the House Higher Education committee on Monday.
Why is it urgent that this legislation be enacted? Chris Rufo documents the horror that are taking place in Austin:
The University of Texas has created a radical DEI bureaucracy that equates “objectivity” with “white supremacy,” recommends the word “wimmin” as a replacement for “women,” and affirms “polyamory” and “polyfidelity” as positive sexual identities.
***
The transformation began in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots, when university officials adopted the narrative of critical race theory, arguing that America was saturated with “white supremacy.” During this period, UT’s College of Communication promoted the idea that “objectivity,” “individualism,” and “worship of the written word” were all “characteristics of white supremacy culture.” As a professor of educational psychology and African and African Diaspora Studies explained, “white supremacy is so pernicious . . . it is responsible for virtually every ill that we see within our communities.”
***
Following the ideology of queer theory, the GSC wants to “break the binary” between man and woman. The university recommends against using terms such as “ladies,” “gentlemen,” “boys,” and “girls” in favor of genderless language and neologisms, such as “babefriend” and “datefriend.”
I don’t know, I might be able to get behind “babefriend.” It seems a little subversive in this context.
In addition, UT provides a guidebook for the use of pseudo-pronouns, such as “they/them” and “ze/zir,” and instructs students to “apologize right away” if they violate usage rules. If not, administrators note, students could be found in violation of the official non-discrimination policy, with potentially severe consequences.
Much more at the link. Obviously, Texans never voted for this regime. It is not just wasteful but evil, and needs to be stamped out. Let’s hope the Texas House does its duty and passes the bill on to Governor Abbott for signature.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.