Marriage Newspeak
Aleister at Legal Insurrection reports on a campaign to eliminate the words “husband” and “wife” from federal statutes:
More than two dozen Democrats have proposed legislation that would eliminate the words “husband” and “wife” from federal law.
Those “gendered terms” would be replaced by “gender-neutral” words like “spouse” or “married couple,” according to the bill from Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif.
“The Amend the Code for Marriage Equality Act recognizes that the words in our laws have meaning and can continue to reflect prejudice and discrimination even when rendered null by our highest courts,” Capps said. “Our values as a country are reflected in our laws. I authored this bill because it is imperative that our federal code reflect the equality of all marriages.”
I can well imagine a time—and that time is probably not too far away—when the words themselves will be considered unacceptably bigoted. I have noticed a trend in that direction, with plenty of liberals I know referring to husbands or wives, boyfriends or girlfriends, as “partners.” Several times I’ve been confused by it, thinking the person to be referring to a business partner or a gay relationship, and been mistaken. In one case, I knew a women for several years, during which she had always referred to her live-in significant other (whom I’d never met) as her “partner.” Imagine my shock when I discovered, after years of assuming she was in a lesbian relationship, that the partner was a man!
In the title of this post I mention Newspeak, Orwell’s name for the language changes fostered by the totalitarian regime in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The purpose of Newspeak was to limit freedom of thought and label unacceptable concepts as “thoughtcrime” and almost literally unthinkable. But in recent years I’ve often felt that our society is going more in the direction of Huxley’s Brave New World, in which the dystopia is clothed in a kinder, gentler facade:
Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance.
“Though you probably don’t know what those are,” said Mustapha Mond.
They shook their heads.
Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.
“But every one belongs to every one else,” he concluded, citing the hypnopé¦dic proverb.
The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.
* * * * * *
“But after all,” Lenina was protesting, “it’s only about four months now since I’ve been having Henry.”
“Only four months! I like that. And what’s more,” Fanny went on, pointing an accusing finger, “there’s been nobody else except Henry all that time. Has there?”
Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voice remained defiant. “No, there hasn’t been any one else,” she answered almost truculently. “And I jolly well don’t see why there should have been.”
“Oh, she jolly well doesn’t see why there should have been,” Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Lenina’s left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, “But seriously,” she said, “I really do think you ought to be careful. It’s such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn’t be so bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won’t do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man”“why, he’d be furious if he knew ”¦”
* * * * * *
“Think of water under pressure in a pipe.” They thought of it. “I pierce it once,” said the Controller. “What a jet!”
He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.
“My baby. My baby ”¦!”
“Mother!” The madness is infectious.
“My love, my one and only, precious, precious ”¦”
Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty”“they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?
Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1947-8 and published in 1949. Brave New World was written in 1931 and published in 1932, but set about five centuries from now; I think Huxley underestimated the pace of change.
Masterpieces, both.
[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that I may need to make explicit something that I think is already implicit here but might not be at all clear. This change in the traditional terms “husband” and “wife” is not supported by all gay people, many of whom are happy to finally be able to use the word. But the change in terms—spearheaded by the left, make no doubt about that—is part of a general plan of the left to change the definition of marriage and all it implies, and to reduce the power of the individual family and of individual choice as a whole, while adopting the guise of supporting the family by extending the right to marriage to gay people.
It’s an interesting act of jujitsu. After all, won’t extending marriage to gay people enhance the traditional concept of monogamy in marriage? Doesn’t it strengthen marriage?
It may strengthen something called “marriage,” but that “something” is less and less likely to include either the practice of faithfulness or even the goal of faithfulness as part of marriage. Of course, this trend was well underway long before marriage was something to which gay couples aspired, but the anti-family trend (as Huxley well recognized in the early ’30s, as seen in the excerpt from his work) has long been part of lefist social engineering. Many gay couples are not even aware of this, but leftist activists certainly are.
Countries which have legalized gay marriage are also countries in which the marriage rates had already fallen, cohabitation rates risen as well as unwed births, and marriage had more often been delayed till after children are born. Stanley Kurtz and others attribute the continuation of this trend to gay marriage, but I actually tend to interpret the statistics along similar lines as this author in Slate, who crunches the same numbers and asserts that these changes had been happening for quite some time anyway and that gay marriage was not particularly causative. I think statistics bear that argument out, but it is irrelevant to my point, which is that these trends are part of an inexorable assault by the left on traditional ideas of marriage and all it has stood for.
And the fact that fidelity has always been something that a significant number of people violate doesn’t change the fact that infidelity has been increasing, and that gay marriage probably will have the effect of undermining fidelity further if male gay activists such as Dan Savage get their way and there are more of what he calls “monogamish” relationships (here’s a summary—at a Christian website—of gay activists’ arguments for infidelity in marriage).
It’s all part of the same trend that has resulted in the legalization of same-sex marriage, and language changes are used to solidify the process.]
1984 the novel wasn’t meant to be a user manual…
G6loq:
I think, though, it was describing a phenomenon re language that was already present. Orwell just took it to its logical extreme, in a very brilliant way.
Orwell was wrong, Huxley was right:
Neil Postman: Amusing ourselves to death.
Didn’t take long:
Christian Pastor In Vermont Sentenced To One Year In Prison After Refusing To Marry Gay Couple.
Land of the sheeple, home of the docile ….
The gay CNBC newsreader Thomas Roberts calls his spouse his husband.
neo-neocon Says:
July 13th, 2015 at 1:39 pm
G6loq:
I think, though, it was describing a phenomenon re language that was already present. Orwell just took it to its logical extreme, in a very brilliant way.
Begin:sarc
Oh, yes. It became a user manual.
Close:sarc
MSNBC newsreader; not CNBC.
But CNBC has Simon Hobbes.
Neo:
But I doubt the people who are implementing Newspeak, or who engage in doublethink would realize or admit that what they are doing was described precisely by Orwell in his novel.
I see it all the time. Political correctness is pervasive and subtle, no one is immune to it.
When I hear the word partner, I think of someone you play bridge or doubles tennis with. How does one convey the that they mean someone they live with and intend to stay with till death do us part?
Cornhead:
Yes, that’s okay for now. At some future point, though…
Your anecdote with “partner” reminds me of when I moved to a country where it is customary to refer to your boyfriend or girlfriend using the word for fiancé(e). I had studied the language before, but somehow missed out on that detail.
Imagine my shock as I “understood” I had moved to a place where most teenagers were apparently engaged, adults were accomplices (arranged marriages?), and the practice was so normalized that nobody thought much of it, the word fiancé(e)s was thrown around the whole time…
They set me straight soon enough – but what an awkward miscommunication it was!
Somewhat related; as an undergraduate I studied Chinese – our textbook was from the PRC and used “updated” language.
The Chinese Communists were trying to get rid of old, imperialist, capitalist language – the words “husband” and “wife” had to go.
They choose to use a word that the textbook claimed was “spouse” (and some online dictionaries still claim the same). However, that word is “ai” (love) “ren” (person) which means just like you would think it means – lover!
Not spouse; but, lover. Way to go – bastardize the language to make foreign students look stupid. In reality they only make themselves look stupid.
And, it is not surprising that statists want to do the same here – not just control the economy, healthcare, education, etc.; but also what language we use.
Anna:
Was the word by any chance “novio/a”? When I learned Spanish long ago, we were told it meant “sweetheart” or “betrothed.”
Gay and lesbian are newspeak for homosexual or transsexual; both are objectively dysfunctional sexual orientations.
Once you go pro-choice, it’s all newspeak, and moral hazards.
Sorry, G6loq, but the page you linked to is a parody site. No pastors being imprisoned…not yet, anyway.
Fidanzato/a.
One of the classics of Italian literature is called “The Betrothed”, but the original title is “I promessi sposi”. That expression is no longer used, to my knowledge, except when referring to that specific novel.
Ragazzo/a is still widely used alongside fidanzato/a, but I am not sure when they started using them synonymously.
Funny how I never really registered it in Spanish, but you are right, novio/a is used in both contexts. (I think. I am bad at Spanish; I kinda-sorta-know it, but I am bad at it.)
OlderandWheezier Says:
July 13th, 2015 at 4:30 pm
Sorry, G6loq, but the page you linked to is a parody site. No pastors being imprisoned…not yet, anyway.
Oh! you noticed!
Sometimes I read news sites, sometimes I read satire to be ahead of the cycle …
The Onion will soon be out of business.
I blame the voters ….
Anna:
I bet you’re better at Spanish than I am, though.
Huxley and Orwell were both correct. The future doesn’t merely have one end result. Things change depending on who is left alive to collapse the wave form.
Things change depending on who is left alive to collapse the wave form.
and some are good with words and pull Switcheroos:
don’t be an ass!
Very amazing. Whittle is an amazing analyst but it’ll take 2×4’s, words won’t be enough.
Why read fiction?
Why read satire?
“Why read fiction?
Why read satire?”
You literally cannot write dystopian/political fiction anymore. Chances are, anything you think of as being outrageous today, will be a mile behind the front lines of social activism and government overreach tomorrow. And if not, you’ll be pilloried as some kind of crazed nut wingnut for believing it’s possible, until it’s already a done deal and you’re a stupid intolerant troglodyte for thinking anything different.
Let’s JUST SAY NO.
Always and everywhere. Like the folks who still say “Merry Christmas!”
I feel like I’ve lost my country. When simple things like this are so wretchedly uncomfortable, the bastards impose their tax on you even as you defy them.
I used to send Christmas cards to everyone; my Jewish friends (who got the non-religious type from me) would sometimes send me Hanukkah cards, which I got a kick out of, and I’d put them on display on the mantel alongside my Christmas cards. But alas, the era of amity is over, if the leftwing nutters have their way.
Ymarsakar:
I think that both are true at the same time in different regions.
North Korea, Cambodia, and the old Red China and the old USSR would be well on the way to something akin to 1984. The West—the US and Western Europe—are Brave New World.
In the end, perhaps one form will spread to encompass the entire globe. But perhaps not. And perhaps at least pockets of liberty will remain.
Judge Richard Berman is a shrink:
NEW YORK — At a hearing Monday in Manhattan in which he ruled filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza must continue community service for four more years, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said he considers D’Souza’s violation of federal campaign-finance laws to be evidence of a psychological problem and ordered further counseling….
… “You have to understand, I have a background in social work with a psychology major,” Berman explained. “I’m sensitive to mental health issues in the criminal cases I hear, and I do not want to end psychological counseling at this time in Mr. D’Souza’s case.”
Read more.
North Korea, Cambodia, and the old Red China and the old USSR would be well on the way to something akin to 1984. The USA?
I feel like I’ve lost my country. When simple things like this are so wretchedly uncomfortable, the bastards impose their tax on you even as you defy them.
The Demoncrats betrayed the South when they ginned up a war for personal benefit, at the expense of Southerners. The Demoncrats betrayed America in Vietnam. The list is very long by now.
Why do people treat Demoncrats as their leaders and those they look up to, instead of the traitors that their record demonstrates?
Instead of Sherman or Lincoln being enemies of the South or US traitors, it was the Democrats. It was always the Democrats.
Even Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, heroes of the South in the civil war, were betrayed by Democrats and used as tools by the political Democrat machine.
Whittle is an amazing analyst but it’ll take 2é—4′s, words won’t be enough.
Nukular
The American people felt pride in defeating Imperial Japan, led by their militaristic and expansionist insane leaders in the junta, via a nuke. Do Americans have the guts and consistency to apply that same standard to home? You know, the home of the brave…
How do they decide which one is the wife?
KBK:
Assuming your question is serious—ordinarily in male/male same-sex marriages both are the husbands, and in female/female lesbian same-sex marriages both are the wives. Just as when there is a child in a same-sex marriages (and plenty involve children, either through previous heterosexual marriages or relationships, artificial insemination, surrogacy, or adoption), there are two fathers in male same-sex marriages and two mothers in female ones.
“Countries which have legalized gay marriage are also countries in which the marriage rates had already fallen”
Since these probably only track legal marriage; I wonder if there is any trend towards religious only marriage.
Neo, my question was serious. Your response makes sense. But I swear I heard a guy refer to his male partner as his wife – I’ll listen more carefully next time. I was thinking there might be roles involved.
SLR:
Some countries, France for instance, require that people marry before the State before they can proceed with the religious ceremony. I have always found it absurd – when you think of it, it sounds ALMOST as if (in all of their laé¯cité) the State recognized the onthological _validity_ of the religious ceremony. Why else would they care whether you meet with a few dozen friends and a priest who says some words, if you do NOT require such a ceremony to produce any _legal_ effects with the State? Hilarious, n’est-ce pas? It is literally illegal to have a church-only marriage. The almightly State literally forbids certains types of religious ceremonies if the State-friendly prerequisites are not met.
A counterexample would be Italy. It is technically possible to church-marry only, without State-marrying, although I do not know (of) anyone who did that, since people _want_ their marriages to produce legal effects. However, some Catholic groups have been suggesting already that they will stop State-marrying (some who are already married went as far to say that they will separate in the eyes of the State) if the homosexual “marriage” becomes the law. Their arguments are that they would no longer recognize themselves in such a new “amplified” social institution, so they would not wish to be associated with it.
KBK:
Among certain same-sex couples, with more sex-role differentiation, they certainly might choose to use a different nomenclature, like the couple you mention. Much more commonly, though, I think it goes the way I described it.
A counterexample would be Italy. It is technically possible to church-marry only, without State-marrying, although I do not know (of) anyone who did that, since people _want_ their marriages to produce legal effects.
European aristocrats often had to get the approval of their feudal lords for marriage. As that would determine the lineage for succession and inheritance.
Perhaps that leaked over into European law, given how northbound they are.
The West German Leftists in the ’60’s tried to achieve that by teaching children that their bodies weren’t their own, especially sexually.
That is the end goal of Progressives.
And of course “mother” and “father” have fallen out of police useage for some time, as gender offenses, and replaced by “parent.”
I’ve also read articles already that state that gay marriage is superior, in that faithfulness is not required, and that will change marriage for the better.
I am just lost as to what to do, so I have started using “him” again for both genders, as is proper English. You have to start somewhere.
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