Clarifying the Clutter
April 16th, 2013 by Dan Carrington posted in Marriage & Family, Political Issues, Society & Culture | No Comments »There has not been, to my best recollection, a more polarizing topic in our society than the current issue of same-sex marriage. Now, before we get further along here, I’d like to point out something about this issue. That is…it is not “gay” marriage.
This is an important distinction, even if only for rhetorical purposes. And by that, I mean that referring to it as “gay” marriage is often used as a rhetorical bludgeoning device that is not as easily employed as the term “same-sex” marriage.
When we use the term “gay” marriage, it can be made to sound as though a specific group of people are being actively discriminated against. Whereas the idea of “same-sex” marriage rightly implies that this is not some sort of active repression which specifically targets a particular sub-culture, but rather an ideology about the concept of a fundamental societal institution.


