"When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
Lewis Carrol: "Through the Looking Glass" 1871
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996. The law defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman.
The Respect for Marriage Act is a proposed bill in the United States Congress that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and allow the U.S. federal government to provide benefits to couples in a same-sex marriage. It would not (at least not yet) compel individual states to recognize same-sex marriages.
George Weigel, writing in National Review Online, on the newly passed law in New York said:
There is a curious rhetorical fact that has usually gone unremarked in these debates, but which is worth pointing out. That what the New York state legislature approved has to be described, not as marriage, but as “gay marriage” or “same-sex marriage” is itself a verbal indicator that what is being done here is counterintuitive. We all know, or thought we knew, what marriage is, and to add the qualifier “gay” or “same-sex” is a tacit admission by the proponents of the practice that it requires an appeal to authority to enforce what seems strange, odd, not right. The verbal tic of “gay marriage” or “same-sex” marriage is thus itself a rhetorical warning sign that what was done in Albany was an exercise in raw state power, the state’s asserting that it can do X simply because it claims that it has the power to do so.
So, when an elected official uses the word "marriage," he or she is telling us that the word "means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less" - until I decide it means something else.
"Dabit deus his quoque finem."
(God will bring an end to this.)
Virgil
