Word-ban genesis? The Bible.

Call me obsessive, but after researching this topic for several years I now tend to sense the heavy presence of Christian assumptions in virtually every sphere of American life. Lately, it was an overt government word-ban initiative related to official funding-request documents.

The pertinent words “to be avoided” are: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based. Each term can be seen to represent a purported biblical ideal to be protected or a long-familiar marching order of the Christian Right (read: conservative Republicans).

Curiously, the genesis of the order is opaque. Some news reports say it came from the top, the Trump administration. Others finger the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (DHHS). In any event, the directive eventually came down from somewhere on high to bureaucrats at the DHHS-administered Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Washington. Staff were urged to judiciously avoid these terms in budgetary documents and in formal requests for funding from the federal government.

CDC officials claim they are only urging budget and fund-request writers to try avoiding these terms so as to not unnecessarily push any hot buttons among Congressional legislators who vote on funding requests. Is that somehow less worrisome than suspected White House censorship?

A Dec. 21 article in The Washington Post reported that government bureaucrats are sensing a more ominous reality. The story concludes that the CDC directive seems to reflect an assault on language that “is much broader, sparking resistance from career officials in federal agencies, outside experts and congressional Democrats.”

If we consider each now-discouraged term closely, it’s hard not to see innate conservative Republican resistance to them (and also, by default, evangelical Christian enmity):

Vulnerable: To the GOP, this word implies probably unworthy people in need of government help that Republicans are trying to avoid providing as much as possible. This is the end game of the core Calvinist Christian work ethic, which shuns underachievers, especially “others,” seen as irresponsible and shiftless.
Entitlement: Same deal. The word implies that someone is entitled to something they haven’t really earned, such as Social Security, Medicare or, worse, Medicaid (which, of course, is for the neediest). After all, God helps those who help themselves; others are clearly freeloaders.
Diversity: In this “Dreamer” moment of immigration contention, “diversity” is seen as almost a dirty word by the Christian Right and Donald Trump supporters. Everyone knows, of course, that white Euro-Christians, not swarthy aliens or even dark-skinned citizens, are God’s real chosen people and are thus the only real Americans.
Transgender: Bible-literalist evangelicals are certain that God hates homosexuals and other “unnatural” deviants. After all, the good book says so in its ancient holy writings. So trans have got to be even worse, right? How, indeed, could we morally even acknowledge such outliers exist?
Fetus: Even though the Bible (as Jesus) is silent about abortion, the faithful conflate their opposition to abortion with the supposed sacredness scripture attaches to human life. So, saying “fetus,” rather than “unborn child,” might dehumanize abortion considerations and lead more people to sin against God. Besides, the word “fetus” doesn’t even sound human. Don’t want to confuse people with more-precise terminology.
Evidence-based: Since Copernicus and Galileo a few centuries ago compellingly demonstrated that the biblical theory of cosmic motion (the sun orbits the earth, not vice versa) was bass ackward, the Christian ecclesiastic establishment has tried to crush any science that disproves scripture. Because Christianity has no evidence of its own, other systems of thought that do have evidence for their hypotheses are seen as existential threats to the faith. It’s true even today, as fundamentalist Christians relentlessly attempt to sneak debunked religious assumptions—e.g., theological creationism and non-man-caused global warming—into science classes across the land.
Science-based: Same deal. Science is all about material, testable, falsifiable evidence. Religion is all about permanently unverifiable fantasies of mind. Never the twain shall meet, no matter how intensely someone might wish otherwise. Leaving religion out of science takes nothing away from science. But leaving scientific reason out of religion—Christianity wishfully postulates they’re both essential parts of belief—removes faith’s sole material connection to the real world.