I made the most appalling discovery yesterday at work. K. and I were in my office, writing ad copy for books and music, and we had been working on the copy for a book about marriage. We had already used the word marriage about three times in about seven sentences, so we decided to see if there was another word we could use in its place for the sake of variety.
I have the Merriam-Webster dictionary on my computer, so I pulled it up, typed in marriage, and started reading. I didn't find any good synonyms, but I did discover this as the second definition: "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage (same-sex marriage)."
When did this become an official definition for marriage? There is only one state in the United States that has legalized same-sex marriage (Massachusetts--the home of such stalwart people as Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank), so that would hardly qualify same-sex marriage as a widely accepted concept. And what's more, when did we start adding adjectival phrases to the beginning of marriage: "same-sex" marriage, "gay" marriage, "homosexual" marriage? Back in those radical sixties when I was growing up--as far as I know--it was just "marriage." At least it was in Wauseon, Ohio.
And now I realize that this is just one more thing that I have to protect my children from. When I was growing up, I was often told to "look it up" by teachers and parents when I had a question about a word's definition. And then as a teacher and parent myself, I was frequently sending students and my own children to dictionaries with their questions about spelling and definitions. Who would have ever thought the dictionary could be such a dangerous place?
4 comments:
You should have called your friend who works for Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids where we define marriage as the union between 2 persons of the opposite sex.
And you better keep a 70's dictionary around for your children to look up words and not the evil internet.
So true, Julia.
I'm glad for the Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids and the work they do.
I'm glad Jewels clarified herself when she said 70's dictionary. Today's dictionary, as annette found out, would have the newer meaning of these words.
It was just "marriage" in Chicago and Lansing IL back when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's also. I was unaware of "gay" marriages, etc.
Annette,
MA isn't the only cesspool any more. You should look up Oregon's SB2 that recenty... are you sitting down?.... PASSED.
Judgment begins at the house of God. As a nation, we no longer believe in God, and are a post-Christian country indeed.
May God have mercy on us, and give us grace to go through the judgment. It's certainly going to get worse before it gets better...
May we become salty again!!
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