My Views on GNU Kind Communication Guidelines and Related Material

I have until now avoided making a public statement about my views on the various interrelated issues regarding the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines that came up over the last month. However, given increasing interest in our community on these issues, and the repeated inquiries that I received privately from major contributors in our community, I now must state my views publicly. I don't have much desire to debate these topics in public, nor do I think such is particularly useful, but I've been asked frequently about these GNU policy statements. I feel, if for no other reason than efficiency, that I should share them in one place publicly for easy reference:

• I think the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, as a stand-alone document, are useful suggestions and helpful to the GNU project and would be helpful, if adopted, for any software freedom project.
• However, I think that the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines standing alone are inadequate for a project of GNU's size and number of contributors to address the stated problems. Traditional Codes of Conduct, particularly those that offer mechanisms for complaint resolution when bad behavior occurs, are necessary in Free Software projects of GNU's size. Codes of Conduct are the best mechanism known today in our community to ensure welcoming environments for those who might be targeted by inappropriate and unprofessional behavior.
• I therefore disagree with the meta-material stated in the announcement of these Communication Guidelines. First, I disagree with the decision to reject any Code of Conduct for the GNU project. Second, I believe that diversity is an important goal for advancing software freedom and human equality generally. I am a supporter of Outreachy and work hard to help it succeed as part of my day job. I have publicly supported affirmative action since the early 1990s, and continue to support it. I agree with “making diversity a goal”; Richard Stallman (RMS), speaking on behalf of GNU, states that perse disagrees with “making diversity a goal”.
• I also disagree with encouraging GNU project contributors to ignore the request of non-binary-gendered individuals who ask for the pronouns they/them, as stated in RMS' personal essay linked to from the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines. My position is that refusing to use the pronouns people ask for is the same unkindness as refusing to call transgendered people by a name that is not their legal name when they request it. I don't think the grammatical argument that “pronouns are different from proper nouns” is compelling enough to warrant unwelcoming behavior toward these individuals. The words people use matter. RMS has insisted for years that people make a clear distinction between open source and free software — for good reason —. I believe that how we say things makes a political statement in itself.
• Related to the last point, I am concerned with the conflating of GNU project views with RMS' personal views. RMS seems to have decided unilaterally that GNU would take a position that requests for use of they/them pronouns need not be honored. I think it is essential that RMS keeps per personal views separate from official GNU policy; I have said so many times to the FSF Board of Directors in various contexts. It was a surprise to me that RMS' personal view on this issue was referenced as part of GNU project guidelines.
• I think the GNU Kindness Communication Guidelines should apply to all communication from the project, including GNU manuals themselves, and I also believe the glibc abort() joke should be removed. I don't believe free speech of anyone is impacted if a Free Software project forbids certain types of off-topic communication in its official channels. Everyone can have their own website and blog to express their personal