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Lee, Pressley, And Garcia Advocate For Gender-Neutral Language In The US Legal Code
House of the Democrats introduced a new law to make the country’s rules and laws fairer and more inclusive for everyone, particularly the LGBTQ Community.
They want to change the words used in the laws to include women, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming Americans. In the past, the laws used only masculine pronouns of He/Him or words of similar connotation, which left out a vast part of the population that identifies as genderqueer.
The law they introduced is called the Equality in Our Laws Act (On Tuesday, Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced the proposal).
It has support from groups that fight for equal rights, like the Equal Rights Amendment Coalition and SisTers PGH, which helps Black, transgender, and nonbinary individuals in Pennsylvania.
One of the representatives, Summer Lee, said that the words used in our laws are significant because they form the basis of how our country is run.
For a long time, certain groups like women, Black, brown, queer, and marginalized individuals were not mentioned on purpose.
But today, they want to change this and make sure that everyone is included and protected by the laws. The proposed law would ask a nonpartisan House office called the Office of the Law Revision Counsel to make updates to the statutes using gender-neutral words.
For example, instead of using “he” for specific roles, they would use words like “the Secretary” to include all genders. Also, terms like “fireman” and “policeman” would be changed to be more inclusive.
However, they won’t change the parts of the laws where gender is very important, like the Violence Against Women Act. They want to keep those laws as they are to protect the rights of women and other gender-specific issues.
Another representative, Robert Garcia, who is openly LGBTQ, said that the United States should show its diversity and equality in the laws it uses.
Thus, this new law aims to make sure that everyone feels included and respected in the legal system of the country.
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