Terminological Land-grab

Casually scanning the WaPost op-ed page for anything of interest (an increasingly difficult quest), I noticed the headline, “Another shift on marriage equality?”  Now, at present, there are several fraught ongoing stories in France and in Italy, concerning the eternal Battle of the Sexes, and I idly wondered what social-engineering poppycock it would be this time.  But in the event, the piece did not concern the dialectic of Man and Woman, Father and Mother, Husband and Wife, but rather the pantomime of inverts playing at husband and wife.   Apparently the writer meant homosexual marriage, but was now calling it “marriage equality”.

Perhaps this insidious phrase has been purling through the national bloodstream for some time, I don’t know, it’s the first time I’ve come across it.    In any case, the author insured that it would stick in the mind, since the article, ho-hum in content, was principally concerned to trot out the phrase over and over: “…a sign that opponents of marriage equality are losing the argument … support for marriage equality is growing.”   It’s like an advertising jingle, really, simply trying to drill-in the brand-name.

Quite apart from the pros-and-cons of the gay-marriage issue, on which I shall not dwell, this semantic sleight-of-hand represents a terminological land-grab.  It is one of those coinages that, purporting to be just one referential lexeme among others, from the outset  tilts the field of the debate:  “illegal alien”, “statutory rape”, “No Child Left Behind”.   Well, each to his own opinion;  but linguistically,  defenders of faith and family should by no means put up with such rubbish.  

In the case of abortion rights, the two camps have linguistically  agreed to disagree:  the one says “pro-life”, the other “pro-choice”:  coreferential, yet differing wildly in intension.   (Readers interested in following-up on this notion, a chestnut of analytic philosophy, can seek discussions of “Morning Star” vs. “Evening Star”, “9” vs. “the number of planets”, learning in the course of it the interesting difference between intention and intension.)   Accordingly, the ball is in the court of the other camp (to which I am not here declaring my allegiance, just being an umpire here) to come up with some slogans of their own. 

Now doffing my umpire’s beanie, and donning the wordsmith’s cap, I offer these, as co-referential/hetero-intensional terms for the neologistic gay-agenda use of “marriage equality”:

Marriage Parody

Marriage Frivolity

Marriage Absurdity

And as a positive, “pro-“ (life/choice) name for what we ourselves hold dear:

Traditional Marriage

Sacramental Marriage

Genuine Marriage

Some modest proposals, offered humbly in the spirit of our lexicographic ancestor Cawdrey.

La manif pour tous

 [Update III 2012]

There is a trick to be guarded against.  … [re apparent altruists] “We just have agents whose full self-interest  includes these other things: … the rain forest or third-world debt.  They are still just as self-interested as anyone else.”  The reason this is a trick is that it empties the view of all content.  It kidnaps the word ‘self-interest’ for whatever the agent is concerned about.  But just for that reason  it loses any predictive or explanatory force.

-- Simon Blackburn, Being Good (2001), p. 36.

[Update Mother's Day 2012]  An important new scholarly contribution  here:
http://magnaliadei.blogspot.com/2012/05/bonds-of-brothers.html