J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
The Defense of Language Act
This past Thursday I published here the first column of The Nobeus News Report I’ve written in nine months.
My third article in the column, titled “Holder’s Law,” was about the decision of then California Attorney General Jerry Brown not to defend in court the California Marriage Protection Act — a ballot proposition and constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 state elections — and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a U.S. federal act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996.
Because both of those laws make same-sex marriage illegal, an incompetent reading of my article could easily miss the point. My topic was not the legitimacy or wisdom of laws defining the word marriage as only being between a man and a woman. I was writing about the failure of due process, when a lawyer refuses to play his role as a diligent advocate because he doesn’t like his case.
I’m not going to repeat my arguments here when I’ve linked the original article above.
But in this article I do intend to discuss precisely what turned me around from thinking the word “marriage” has a particular denotation that needs to be defended on etymological grounds, and made me conclude that libertarian theory separates me from conservatives in their desire to defend a single traditional meaning of the word “marriage.”
What made me decide to write about this topic today was hearing Fox News Channel host Mike Huckabee — a former Arkansas governor and likely a 2012 Republican presidential candidate — have to fall back on that old liberal standard, statistics, when Fox’s house libertarian Andrew Napolitano strongly challenged Huckabee on why government should be involved in setting the terms of that bedstead contract which is marriage.
Governor Mike Huckabee
Ironically, it wasn’t a libertarian argument, but a conservative argument, that puts me squarely into opposition to enforcing any dictionary definition of a word, the way Governor Huckabee and other conservatives want to do.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard conservatives ranting about how liberals want to shove “politically correct” speech codes down everybody’s throat when it comes to race, gender, nationality, or class.
Some of the most common:
- We can’t say “girl” anymore; we have to say “woman.”
- It’s not “illegal aliens”; it’s “undocumented workers.”
- Forget the “N” word — you can no longer even say “colored” or “Negro”; you have to say “African-American” or black.
- There are no longer “stewardesses” on airliners; there are “flight attendants.”
- No more firemen or policemen; now it’s “firefighters” and “law-enforcement officers.”
- Forget using any word that ends with “ess” or “ix.” Amelia Earhart was an aviator the same as Charles Lindbergh, not an “aviatrix.”
- And the movie The Matrix is just completely wrong. It should be The Mater. Er, The Progenitor.
Okay, maybe not this last.
The point is, I’ve spent hours and hours of my life having my ear chewed off by conservatives who oppose being told how they have to use some words and not use other words; then turn around and without even noticing that they’re doing it start demanding that there be a politically-enforced speech code for how the word “marriage” is allowed to be used.
Alarm bells (not belles!) go off. The computer on Twilight Zone starts spitting out punchcards and smoking. Robbie the Robot starts ranting “That does Not Compute.”
Contradiction. Hypocrisy. Double standard. French.
Yes, French. The Académie française — worried that the French aren’t preserving the purity of their official State language — urges laws outlawing phrases like “Le weekend” and attempt to snuff out the use of “email” instead of the properly French courriel.
My conservative brethren — er, Genetically Close Relations — beware. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s warning about little minds aside, inconsistency undercuts the righteousness of a cause. If you demand that everybody use the definition of marriage that you prefer — and object to others redefining the word to be inclusive of meanings you dislike — you’re just as much a Speech Totalitarian as those you’ve been calling Politically Correct.
This article is Copyright © 2011 The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.
My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available for sale or rental on Amazon.com Video On Demand. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
March 1, 2011 - 1:25 pm
“The point is, I’ve spent hours and hours of my life having my ear chewed off by conservatives who oppose being told how they have to use some words and not use other words; then turn around and without even noticing that they’re doing it start demanding that there be a politically-enforced speech code for how the word “marriage” is allowed to be used.”
There is a difference between being told which words one can or can not use, and insisting that a word be used according to its established definition. Re-defining a word, and therefore the concept it represents, is the *exact same thing* as the ass-hattery that is Politically Correct Speech.
March 1, 2011 - 4:25 pm
So you’re opposed to Dictionary Police telling you which words you may and may not use, or have to use, but you have no problem with Dictionary Police telling you what the words you use have to mean — right?
March 1, 2011 - 8:01 pm
Actually, I rely on *Dictionaries*, not the “Dictionary Police”.
I recommend that you do a bit of research into the history of human marriage.
Here is a nice place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage
March 2, 2011 - 5:23 am
You’re arguing the wrong point.
By etymology, ancient custom, cultural anthropology, religion, and any other historical examination you care to make, marriage is a union between a man and a woman, or a man and multiple women (you’ll find polygamy in the Bible) meant to sanctify, regulate, and authorize human copulation and reproduction and the transfer of property to the progeny of those sexual unions.
Now a bunch of newcomers with their own ideas and agendas come along and want to redefine the concept and the word to mean something else. They gain popular acceptance for their new definition.
Yes, it requires Dictionary Police to prevent people from using the new definition the way they have chosen.
March 2, 2011 - 11:07 am
“Now a bunch of newcomers with their own ideas and agendas come along and want to redefine the concept and the word to mean something else. They gain popular acceptance for their new definition.
Yes, it requires Dictionary Police to prevent people from using the new definition the way they have chosen.”
You seem to be arguing against yourself at this point….
March 2, 2011 - 2:37 pm
I agree with you that there is an established meaning of the word “marriage” which is being revised to a new meaning inclusive of same-sex unions. But dictionaries don’t command how speakers and writers have to use words. They merely record how people do use words. If people start using a new definition of marriage the dictionaries start including the additional definition.
The attempt to enforce a traditional usage of the word marriage is the creation of a speech code, a practice which conservatives have otherwise condemned as politically correct. Conservatives creating a speech code to enforce a traditional usage of the word “marriage” is hypocritical because it violates their previous standard.
Which was and still is the point of this article.
March 2, 2011 - 2:56 pm
The attempt to force upon the majority a new definition of the word marriage is *also* the creation of a speech code, a practice which so-called liberals have embraced as politically correct.
Liberals (or any other pigeonholing name-group you wish to choose) attempting to modify a speech code to force a change in the millennia-old, well-established, majority-held understanding of the word “marriage” is nothing short of Orwellian.
Words have meanings for a reason. Come up with a new word for your new situation, and stop trying to co-opt one already established.
Or should we just start smurfing every word until they are smurfy enough to smurf?
March 2, 2011 - 3:01 pm
Additionally, I find it both comedic and disingenuous that you title your article “Defense of Language” when in fact yours is an attack on the fundamentals of language – the meanings of the words. Again, Orwell would be proud of you.
Of course, you’re free to ignore the enforcement of traditional usages of any of my foregoing words, and interpret them however you please, such as, “I’m going to get a sandwich!”, or “I like playing with glass on the freeway!” Stick it to the Dictionary Police! Apply your *own* understanding to words!
I have just decided that the term “Dictionary Police” is to be interpreted as “Hooters Girl”, and with that, I’m off to lunch.
March 2, 2011 - 3:21 pm
The question of how a word is used is a market decision, an individual choice made by each user. When a new word or usage of an old word becomes popular, editors of dictionaries — a market product — note the additional or revised usage.
There is unquestionably a market for the traditional usage of the word “marriage” as well as a market for the revised usage of the word “marriage.”
My article is about the attempt by conservatives to claim that their usage is the only “correct” one — a conservative adoption of the practice of “politically correct” speech codes they have previously condemned.
One such as you may see historical, etymological, anthropological, cultural, ethical, moral, practical, sociological, or statistical reasons to wish the original meaning of marriage is preserved, but that is a job of market sales, not of political force.
You want people to use the old definition of marriage: persuade them.
If you can’t do that and have to resort to force, you are not only no better than a politically correct speech-code-enforcing liberal — you’ve become the mirror image of one.
March 2, 2011 - 3:28 pm
The dictionary is not holy writ handed down by God. You sound to me like the woman I saw interviewed on Fox News who when asked where Obama got the money he was giving her in welfare didn’t know and didn’t care.
Dictionaries are nothing more than recordings of how words are used. Advocates for including same-sex unions in the definition of marriage have been persuasive and won for themselves a market segment of the market for “marriage.”
You want a monopoly on usage that can only be obtained by force.
Sorry. That’s not conservative. That’s totalitarian.
March 2, 2011 - 4:04 pm
Pot calls kettle Totalitarian.
March 2, 2011 - 6:05 pm
By writing in favor of freedom of language usage I’m a totalitarian? When I actually agree with your preference for how the word “marriage” would be used, but won’t join you in shoving my conscience on others by use of force? That’s the best you’ve got? Admit you’ve lost the argument. You’re done.
March 2, 2011 - 6:12 pm
You seem to be saying that a minority ought to be empowered to impose their will upon the majority.
The underpinning issue isn’t about word usage, or word meaning – that’s a red herring. The issue is that the LGBT community, for some reason, has chosen to horn its way into an historically Het institution. One must ask why this is perceived as necessary – why must LBGT unions be labeled “Marriage”? Do not misunderstand me – I have no qualms whatsoever about consenting adults of any persuasion cohabitating, communing, copulating, breeding – MF, FM, M*F, F*M, F*M*, MM, FF, M*, F*, whatever. And I have not compunction against consenting adults of any persuasion filing for state-granted benefits and privileges. Nine wives and ten husbands, and they all want tax breaks and insurance? Line ‘em up, sign ‘em up, and give it to ‘em.
But.
The LGBT community has chosen to make war over the definition of a word. Why? What’s the point? Is the word itself so very intrinsically valuable? Again, why not coin a shiny new term instead of forcing way into the usage of another already well-established? If all that is important is legal status – so claimed loudly by the LGBT forces afoot – then why not take the term Legal Union and run with it? Why oh why do they care so very much about leveraging their way into the conservatively-populated Marriage camps? Do you truly fail to see the aggressive nature of such action?
You continue to decry the use of force of any kind, yet this is precisely what you propose ought to be overlooked – the forcing of the will of the few upon the many.
That you fail to see the totalitarianism of this concept illustrates how truly incapable you are of seeing both sides of an issue.
Will you shout so loudly from your soapbox if the French come along and demand that all their loaned words be pronounced in the French way? Or is your voice reserved alone for this one hot-button topic, for which you have no impartiality?
If you truly rail against totalitarianism alone, then you are preaching to the schwa. However, it’s apparent that you have other motivations and/or a lack of perspective that precludes your accomplishment of a resolution in this matter.
March 2, 2011 - 8:21 pm
Just the opposite. Markets solutions allow for both mass-market and niche-market products peacefully to co-exist. Only the introduction of force makes one decide between majority and minority selections, replacing win-win solutions with win-lose solutions.
The reason Gays and Lesbians wish to call their unions “marriage” is an attempt to give their unions the same status as heterosexual unions. An attempt to win approval of one’s product labeling is essential in any marketing. That’s why the marketing label “tuna” sells better than what it used to be called — “horse mackerel.”
Now, if you can muster arguments to convince most people to continue using the old definition of marriage and not use the new definition, you win the mass market and they’re left with the niche market.
But that’s properly done through persuasion, not force, since this question is a matter of conscience.
In fact, as a straight male born in 1953, all my natural biases are against redefining the word marriage.
But my libertarian principles require me to put my own preference aside and tolerate outcomes that I might not personally choose, so long as force is not used to achieve it.
I prefer butterscotch to vanilla or chocolate. The market does not reflect my personal preference. I do better when low-carb hamburger and hot dog buns are on my supermarket shelf. There are evidently not enough consumers to make that happen, so the demand doesn’t make that happen. I often like movies that are box-office disasters because they don’t satisfy a mass audience. Too bad for me.
My feelings on how other people choose to use the word marriage should no more force other people to use the word the way I like than I have the right to make them eat butterscotch.
March 4, 2011 - 6:21 pm
To the one who talked about opinion vs. fact, as if everybody agreed it was a threat, please consider this viewpoint. And about ten more from different angles.