Definition of Marriage has been changedFollow

Because when you publish the dictionary, you are allowed to do this.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marriage

Kudos to Merriam-Webster for this.

Next stop, unabridged OED!

Oxford English or it never happened.

Try Wikipedia.

Does this make the term "same-sex marriage" a tautology?

When did the public policy change? And where? There are far more states which have legally defined marriage to *not* include same sex couples than have done the opposite, so it's hard to present this as anything other than changing the definition in a dictionary so that folks can point to that when arguing what the definition of marriage is. But no one ever quote dictionary definitions in an argument, right?

Circular logic is circular...

There ya go. The liberal media now includes Merriam-Webster.

I take issue with this Post.

Thats true, I suppose I was only thinking about policy in america.

It's cart leading the horse logic, regardless. On the one hand, you can say that as social perceptions change, our definition of the words change. But it's equally true that by simply changing the definitions of words in dictionaries you can change the social perception.


I can say with some great degree of certainty that at some point in the future, I'll be debating the issue of gay marriage in some thread, and someone will link to the MW definition of marriage to "proof" that the definition of marriage includes same sex couples. Whatever that means in the broader context of that future debate isn't really relevant, but I've run into the "the dictionary says it's true so it must be" argument often enough to know this will happen.

I tend to prefer definitions for things that don't reflect relatively recent political agendas. I think that this is a valid approach for someone who is arguing against the very political agenda at issue.


I just don't see how you can have any sense of the history of an issue if you don't at least acknowledge when word meaning changes have occurred. And I don't see how you can intelligently discuss an issue without an understanding of the history. If we don't know where we've been and where we came from, how can we assess where we are and where we're going? It's like just floating free in a cloud of made up stuff and thinking you know where you're going.


I don't like it. Not one bit!

etc. etc.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way...

No. I prefer discussions *about* such things. Writing the definition for something that matches what you want it to be isn't the same thing.

Maybe our definitions of "a lot of thought and dialog" differ here. I tend to think that about 20 years of political activism, which has succeeded in swaying the legislatures of what? two states to change their legal definitions, while something like 20 states have formalized definitions in the opposite isn't exactly sufficient for someone to write the new and not even close to adopted or accepted definition into the dictionary.

In a century... maybe. Right now, it's pretty obvious wishful thinking.