Oh, My, New Words!

The Boston Globe’s token reactionary conservative columnist, Jeff Jacoby, produced a probably unintentionally amusing piece on same-sex marriage law. The gist of it is that Massachusetts will soon follow Ontario in adjusting laws to replace terms like husband, widower, wife, and widow with gender-neutral words.

First, he belabored the obvious by saying he “ventured a prediction” that this would happen. Cause and effect, Jeff...this has happened from the earliest laws. Then he jumps to this not being just terminology tweaking. He writes:

The real target is the significance of marriage itself -- the idea, fundamental to human happiness and all successful societies, that the purpose of marriage is to bring men and women together for their mutual welfare and for the protection and well-being of any children they create or adopt. It is that deeply ingrained belief that the marriage radicals are determined to do away with. One purpose of the official marriage newspeak is to make such thoughts increasingly unthinkable.

He concludes with anticipated victimhoood:

This is just the start. The assault is not going to let up until the heteronormative deviants among us have been silenced. You think the marriage radicals have gone too far? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

One can only hope that he lives long enough to remember this prediction and write in a decade or two, “Well, maybe I was a bit extreme on that one.”