The Problem With the Government’s Pansexual Pride Day Post
3 min read
The federal agency tasked with “improving the health, safety, and well-being of America” alerted its more than 2 million social-media followers to a little-known celebration on Sunday. “On Pansexual and Panromantic Pride Day, everyone deserves to feel seen, respected and supported—no matter who they love,” the Department of Health and Human Services posted. “Create a world where everyone feels proud to be themselves!”
If you are unfamiliar with the terms pansexual and panromantic, you’re not alone—I had to look them up.Pansexual means being sexually attracted to people who identify as any or no gender––accounts differ as to whether the term is interchangeable with bisexual. Panromantics are romantically attracted to people who identify as any or no gender. I’d never heard that term, which has appeared only once in The New York Times. So why is HHS adopting it?
People will reasonably wonder: Has the Democratic administration handed a federal agency to staffers who cater to the needs of activists over the average American? That impression can contribute to the caricature that Democrats are the HR party and can help swing elections. Wherever one stands in the culture wars, and however broadly one defines the ambit of HHS, Americans should at least agree on this much: The state should address the public in words that are legible to most citizens, rather than using the obscure jargon of any subculture.
Social-media users who understood the HHS message weren’t uniformly hostile. One Facebook user said it was good that the federal department “went out of its way to celebrate” pansexuality and panromanticism. “I have friends along the LGBTQI spectrum,” she wrote. “It makes me happy that they are recognized … Cheers to them and all of their loved ones!”
That’s a nice sentiment. Life is hard, humans have diverse sexual preferences, and it is my view that so long as they aren’t committing incest or pedophilia, consenting adults should be free to find love as they wish. But how could the social-media team at HHS fail to foresee that this post would be counterproductive, making people angry rather than accepting? As one X user put it, “When the history of this rights movement is written 100 years from now, this chapter of history will show that capturing government institutions and corporate PR departments before consolidating popular support did a whole lot more harm than good.”
On the whole, my guess is that HHS alienated more people than it attracted. Certainly it seems to have elicited more backlash than support online––not just from social conservatives who disapprove of any form of sexuality that strays from biblical teaching, but from diverse observers who left comments on the HHS posts including “I’m confused,” “I so wish HHS would focus on Human Health rather than a narrative/agenda,” “seems like government waste,” and “I’m gay and we’re sick of this too. Stop.”
The federal government cannot help but post messages that some people dislike. But it can do better than statements that many people don’t even understand, in part because they’re downstream of activist lobbies more than organic language that’s used by the public before the bureaucrats. The social-media team at HHS probably intended to be inclusive. But adopting the terms of progressive academics and insular activists is not inclusive. It is exclusive––the rhetorical equivalent of holding the next Pride parade inside a gated community, then being surprised that many of the people who had trouble getting in feel upset.
