"I met my wife here. AND- waitaminute, waitaminute, just to set the record straight, SHE'S A WOMAN! The thing is, you actually knew that, right? When I said I met my wife here, you knew she was a woman, I wanna tell you, that's because you know what marriage is"
-Colin Craig, AUSA Marriage Amendment Bill Debate, 2012
One of the most peculiar arguments against same-sex marriage out there. The idea that a legal status will somehow determine conversational English, or that conversational English should somehow determine a legal status. Bob McCoskrie has argued ad nauseum about how the legislation will eliminate terms like those listed in the first paragraph, that a Politically Correct Gestapo will stop us using words like 'Mum' and 'Dad'.
First off, a quick show of hands: How many of you have ever read a piece of government legislation prior to the Marriage Amendment Bill?
This is such a frivolous argument. Legal definitions DO NOT DICTATE CONVERSATIONAL ENGLISH. We refer to Mum/mother or Dad/father long, long, long before we even learn to read, let alone develop any desire to read legal documentation. Conversational English doesn't run with that level of exactness! When have you ever encountered someone who takes their cues from technical jargon? We use language in a fluid way, it's all ambiguous, and depends on the context built up in a rapport to be meaningful. Legal documents don't work that way, they require exact and precise definitions, specificity, in order to avoid loopholes and legal challenge. The two are worlds apart. We never read our kids the story of the Three Porcine-New Zealanders, each between 4'2" and 4'6" tall, and the incident involving the Alleged Lupine Assailant. And for good reason! Legal documents determine legal classifications, not common English.
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| ProtectMarriangeNZ: Marriage is between a face, and a palm |
Further to the above: Regardless of what the opponents of this bill tell
us, people are already changing the 'definition' of marriage without
regard for the legal status. When ProtectMarriageNZ decided to claim
that Lynda Topp supported them by virtue of her (then upcoming) Civil Union, she decided to speak up and slam the cads for appropriating her name, and claimed she was getting married. Friends of mine in Civil Unions refer to each other as 'husband' and 'wife', as do some in de facto relationships.
And the terms are intelligible! The point where Colin Craig's argument in the quote up top falls down so tragically, is that although he thinks he's invoking an inherently gendered union, he's instead just relying on the gendered individual term 'wife'. When someone mentions their 'wife', because it's a gendered term, we know they are referring to a woman that they are in a long-term commitment in, even if they themselves are a woman and regardless of whether or not that long-term commitment is legally recognised as marriage or merely as a civil union. Unless they're being ironic, in which case any of those could be inverted, because that's what irony is for.
When it comes to other gendered terms, the argument becomes even more tenuous. Father is a gendered term for either a male parent (someone raising you), or a biological progenitor (sperm donor, biological father of an adoptee, etc.). Likewise with the gender inverted for a woman. This does not in any way mean that a father or a mother (or a grandmother or grandfather) are married, or married to correlating mother/father. Depending on the relationship and the feelings of those involved, someone considered to be a father or mother may not be biologically so or even LEGALLY so (part of the reason Louisa Wall drafted the bill was to deal with the legal ambiguity of civil union partners in the parenting of children from prior relationships etc.).
People use language as they will. The bill seeks only to address the relationship between the state and couples in the LGBTQI minority. Mums will still be mums, dads will still be dads, even if Girls are Boys who like Boys to be Girls, who do Boys like they're Girls, who do Girls like they're Boys. Always should be someone you really love!
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| Delivering a legal opinion on the "They'll ban words!" argument |
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