Out of respect for nonbinary and transgender people, the American Civil Liberties Union on Saturday altered a quotation by late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to remove all references to women.
SO WHAT
Even liberal, feminist icons can be censored if their ideas don’t keep up with “progress.”
NOW
With the left up in arms about perceived threats to abortion rights, the ACLU tweeted out a stylized quote by Ginsburg in defense of a “woman’s right to choose — but replaced the word “woman” with “persons” and the female pronouns with gender-neutral alternatives.
The edited quote, from Ginsberg’s 1993 Senate confirmation hearing, was meant to honor the abortion rights advocate on the first anniversary of her death.
THEN
Days after Ginsburg’s death, the ACLU published a tribute to the trailblazing justice that included an unedited version of the quote.
THE REACTION
In response to the updated quotation, Twitter commentators panned the ACLU, a storied civil rights organization that has taken a woke turn in recent years.
- Some accused the group of erasing women: “This is deeply wrong,” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said.
- Others had grammatical beefs: “Those brackets are to make an existing text clearer, not to add new stuff to the text,” said ACLU lawyer Jennifer Granick.
- Yet others said the ACLU proved the absurdist state of the left: “You couldn’t invent a better way to highlight the absurdity of activist culture than this tweet,” tweeted Noah Blum of Tablet magazine.
SAME ENERGY
Gender politics have become an increasingly prominent sideshow of abortion rights activism.
- Earlier this month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., seemed to struggle to consistently use the preferred gender-neutral terminology when denouncing Texas’ abortion ban on CNN.
- Days beforehand, progressive journalist Imani Gandy demanded on Twitter that her colleagues stop making the ban about women, saying, “It’s ignorance and cruelty at this point. That’s how I view it and I know a lot of you know better.”
