The website WorldNetDaily has discovered that Merriam-Webster has changed the definition of the word "marriage" to include same-sex couples. They've posted a mournful video at the site, ending with a warning for people to "WAKE UP!"
WND is a little late to the party, since this change took place in 2003 - and followed by three years a similar change by Houghton-Mifflin in 2000.
But better late than never.
This is obviously a crushing event for the Christianists. As the culture has been changing on gay marriage, their only refuge in the civil society was the dictionary. Their own religious arguments are persuasive to them, but citations to the Book of Hebrews or Matthew (included in a 1913 dictionary definition) don't go a long way to persuade the non-religious - or even many American religious believers. The most recent Field Poll in California found that 31% of Protestants, 45% of Catholics and 63% of believers in some other religion support full marriage rights for same-sex couples. That's why the Prop. 8 proponents relied so heavily on appeals to the "definition of marriage," and "the meaning of marriage" in their ballot arguments. Definitions are - well, they're defined. We know what they are - just go to the dictionary. They're not just citing their Bibles, they've got another big book on their side as well.
The problem is that dictionaries are not static. Language
follows the culture, and words are as dynamic as the populations
who use them.
More important, the meaning of words as they are actually used is
not subject to popular votes - it is subject to actual usage.
Neither of these dictionary definitions overrides the most common meaning of "marriage" as the union of a man and a woman. That would be absurd, and it would be counter to common sense. But it is equally absurd for a dictionary to blind itself to an emerging, and well-understood change that is happening in the culture. Even those who oppose same-sex marriage cannot deny what it is they are fighting over: marriage between two people of the same sex.
As the right has been fighting over the legal definition of marriage, they have been giving greater prominence to the alternate understanding that so many people are now adopting. Under the revised rules of equality the right is demanding, gays must fight for a majority to achieve marital equality - and we're only inches away. But dictionary definitions don't need majorities. If a significant number of people are, in fact, using a word with a new meaning, they have an obligation to include that meaning on the list of other meanings the word has.
Despite the harrowing cries of the right, that is all gays are asking - not to displace the heterosexual understanding of marriage, but to be included in it as we are: people whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual. And by the very fact of fighting this battle, our opponents made sure we'd get into the dictionary.
Thanks.