It Goes Without Saying

 

I don't like homosexuals.

Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike them either. The whole thing is none of my business and frankly, I'm not especially interested. And all of my views of homosexuality are irrelevant – whatever they are. I'm free to express them. The Constitution says so. However no one cares, so why bother.

But there's one thing I have to say, and I don't care if no one is interested. It has to do with members of that cause. I'm against their perversion. No. Once again it's not what you think. It has nothing to do with their choices for companionship. Rather it's their ongoing attack on the English language and on our culture. I have no problem with homosexual unions nor with their being accorded the same economic and insurance benefits as marriage. In fact I support such policies. But I take issue with the hijacking of the word “marriage.” The insistence that homosexual unions be called marriages will, in effect, take away a perfectly good word from our language – one that indicates a particular relationship of a man and a woman. (Over time we have lost the idea of “common-law marriage,” and “partner” now has a totally different meaning from what it used to have.) Nothing but political points is gained by blurring the meaning of the word, and the insistence that this word be used seems to me to be contrary to what was originally demanded.

Following the Stonewall Riot of 1969, homosexuals were encouraged to “come out of the closet.” And they did so. More power to them. They demanded that they be permitted to be who they were, and to be accepted as such; that their sexual orientation was no one's business but their own.ⁱ Differences between people were irrelevant. In fact, differences should be encouraged. So far, so good. That was fine for their community and it certainly did not represent a threat to anyone else.

But soon there were demands on others. They forced much of the rest of society into the closet. One of their demands related to languageⁱⁱ Although there was a long history of “gay” having sexual connotations (though this was a secondary understanding of the word), these connotations were usually heterosexual. In the mid and late twentieth century, however, the term, which was generally understood as “happy” and “carefree,” came to be related, through their efforts, to homosexuals, because “homosexual” was considered too clinical and pejorative, and because, up until 1969, homosexuality itself was a crime in England. Homosexual men, considering themselves happy and carefree, preferred the term “gay,” though women continued to label themselves, and be labeled by others, as Lesbians.ⁱⁱⁱ In any event, the term “gay” was lost in its previous sense, and there is no good substitute.

Perhaps this is all “a phase we're going through.” I hope so. I hope that in time labeling will disappear. In the meantime, however, our language^iv will be impoverished as it has been by other groups. Notwithstanding my views of equality, I regret the changes in our language that have come about with Black Power and the feminist movement. “Holocaust” and “ghetto” used to have specific meanings and connotations which are now buried in history. And the reinvention and removal of gender^v from much of our language – like the substitution of “their” for “his” or “her” and the neutering of other terms – leaves us with such monstrosities as “To each their own” and “chairperson.”

I know that language changes over time, but I'd be happier if it were enlarged, not diminished by change. And it is being diminished in terms of descriptive words as time goes by.

I agree with the view that we should enlarge our view of others as our brothers and sisters. We should welcome everyone irrespective of his or her practice, as long as others aren't detrimental to us. But by welcoming them, by widening our community, we should not be diminishing our language. We should be enlarging it as well. Our union should be one that allows our language to flower along with our population.

Next episode: “Out At Home” – Baseball and the world in which we live.

i    They demanded that there be no discrimination against them.  Fair enough, but, of course, discrimination should not be permitted against any citizen or, for that matter, against anyone anywhere.  Statutes outlawing such biases were passed even though they, and similar laws, should not be necessary.  (When you pass a law forbidding discrimination against some groups it is logical to assume that intolerance displayed against groups not specifically named is perfectly legitimate.  But that idea deserves its own essay, so I'll have no more to say about it here.) Indeed, “hate laws,” – or, more accurately, anti-hate laws – seem to me to be silly and “un-American.”  I suspect I wouldn't care, if someone killed me, that he uttered a slur before doing so.  I'd still be dead.  And the same is true for theft, assault, or whatever.  What we need more than additional laws is the enforcement of the ones already on the books.

     Not only that, I'm offended by the stricture on name-calling. I oppose such insults of course, but I don't think there should be laws against them. It seems to me that the First Amendment makes such behavior legal, however reprehensible it may be.  When I was growing up we were taught that “ … words will never hurt you.”  They do, but it was accepted that name-calling was usual, and part of life.  If any action is to be taken against it, that should be educational.

ii  Another was the interpolation and explosion of homosexuality in popular culture.  Nowadays there is a homosexual or a reference to homosexuality in many, if not most, plays and television programs.

iii  Presumably they had a different self-image.  (By the way, some other terms are used as well.)

iv  American English.  But it's probably like that in other languages as well. I can't imagine that Americans are the only ones foolish enough to place political before correctness and to value sensitivity over sense and fads over facts. But I could be wrong.  Perhaps we are the only ones dumb enough to hoodwink ourselves.

v “Gender” – from genus, meaning “kind” or “type” – properly refers to differences of characteristics and was largely related to language and, in some tongues, the assignment of “male” or “female” characteristics to certain nouns.  Only more recently has it come to mean “sex” or, often, a self-assigned “nature” – how we feel about ourselves, and what should have been. We treat ourselves like words, but treat words, themselves, badly.