Once again, it's time to begin reframing an issue. Although I haven't been screaming at Tweety about this, yesterday, a perfectly reasonable diary about social conservatives in Pennsylvania was titled First the workers, then women, then the voters and now same sex marriage. Who will be next? Actually, in the past week, this is one of 42 DKos diaries to use the phrase. I KNOW that the writers here are using it as a substitute/synonym for marriage equality (47 diaries in the past week, which means five DIDN'T use "same-sex marriage"), but I think it's time to say "marriage" or "marriage equality" instead?
Why? As I said the last time a phrase that the people to the right of us use to describe something that we use too annoyed me, words have meanings. Look how the right has reshaped political reality; tax relief, death tax, earmarks, gay marriage, "pro-life." They can do this because the mainstream media is lazy (we're all lazy, actually), and will accept the simplest framing of any issue just to make it comprehensible for the lowest common denominator viewer or reader.
Actually, it's more pernicious this time. I'm beginning research for a paper I'm presenting at a conference next month called "If marriage is in trouble, it's not marriage equality's fault," which I'm going to begin with a couple of paragraphs that indicate how the defenders of "traditional marriage" (which only existed in this country for about fifteen years, according to Stephanie Coontz), and at the defenders' websites (no surprise) you won't see the phrase "marriage equality" anywhere.
Three examples:
As Scott Wooledge posted yesterday, the ballot language on the marriage referendum in Washington had to be rescued from the Republican AG Rob McKenna, who wanted to say "The bill would redefine marriage to allow same-sex couples to marry, apply marriage eligibility requirements without regard to gender, and specify that laws using gender-specific terms like “husband” and “wife” include same-sex spouses." The final ballot measure, which is an affirmation of the marriage-equality bill, doesn't include the phrase "redefine marriage," which Scott observes is the National Organization for Marriage's top selling point (according to them).
We REALLY dodged a bullet on that, if this article, Washington ballot best chance for foes of same-sex marriage (February 16, 2012) is true -- the foes of marriage equality had two measures they were circulating, an initiative that would (yes) redefine marrage as between a man and a woman, and a referendum that would "repeal the gay-marriage law. I've linked the article only so you can see that the word "equality" is nowhere to be seen. We know about that (I was trying to find the link to the hate group that filtered news reports to change "Gay" to "Homosexual" which produced the headline about the runner Tyson Gay, but Google changed "Homosexual sets record" to "Gay sets record", so something has changed), but it's still surprising to see the refusal to use "equality" in reporting.
Finally, there's New Hampshire Cornerstone, (h/t Scott Wooledge for this too) which is even squeamish about it. Expand one of the listings on the front page, and you'll see:
Please join Cornerstone Policy Research, New Hampshire’s Family Policy Council, for an evening lecture on “Making the Case for Traditional Marriage in New Hampshire” given by renowned marriage expert Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse.
In just a couple of weeks, the New Hampshire House of Representatives will vote on a bill to repeal same-s*x marriage, HB 437. Dr. Morse, who was a leading voice supporting the well known Proposition 8 campaign in California against same-s*x marriage, will discuss why it is critical that New Hampshire pastors and citizens fight to restore traditional marriage in the Granite State
"
same-s*x marriage! Good heavens! Can't say "sex"? Who are these people afraid of offending? Not the LGBT community.
I understand you might think it's about variety in writing, but it's not "gay marriage," it's marriage, and when you write about the marriage of two people of the same sex, it's "marriage equality." You'll tick off the bigots who oppose it if you use those terms, and that's enough reason to do so. Thank you for your attention.
9:20 PM PT: Thanks for the republication, and thanks (you know who you are) for policing the comments!