This point was driven home to me by a recent article in The Daily Princetonian about the National Organization for Marriage and its campaign against same-sex marriage (SSM). As this article makes plain, opponents of SSM are often keen to insist, as it if it were some sort of objection to legal reform, that any move to extend marriage rights to gays and lesbians would amount to a “redefinition” of marriage.
Now the most important thing to say about this bit of rhetoric should be obvious: There is simply nothing wrong with changing the meaning of a word. There may be something to be said for political conservatism, the idea that old ways of doing things should be preserved unless there is some very strong reason for changing them. But there is nothing whatsoever to be said for semantic conservatism, the idea that it is presumptively wrong to change the meaning of a word. So when SSM opponents insist that equal marriage would entail a redefinition of “marriage,” the right response is, “So what? Words change their meanings all the time.” If there are serious objections to SSM, this is not one of them.
That is really all that needs to be said, but since the charge of “redefinition” seems to carry weight with some people, it is worth asking whether a change in the marriage laws to permit SSM would in fact amount to a redefinition of the word. The key point here is that a change in the legal rules involving a word is not always a change in the meaning of that word. When the vote was extended to African-Americans in 1870 and then to women in 1920, the meaning of the word “vote” did not change. When gays and lesbians are given the right to serve openly in the armed forces, the meaning of the word “soldier” will not change. So why should a change in the legal rules governing marriage amount to a change in the meaning of “marriage”?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “marriage” as “the condition of being a husband or wife; the relation between persons married to each other; matrimony.” (“Matrimony” is then defined, unhelpfully, as “the state or condition of being married”.)
The OED notes explicitly that the term is “sometimes used to apply to couples of the same sex.” True, the OED defines “husband” as “a man joined to a woman by marriage (correlative of wife).” The OED is thus internally inconsistent on this point. And yet the point stands that, strictly speaking, a move to marriage equality would not require a change in this definition of “marriage”; it would rather require a slight modification in the definition of “husband.” (Try this rhetorical talking point: A vote for SSM is a vote to change the meaning of “husband.”) Older dictionaries sometimes define “marriage” as “the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex” (Webster’s); but recent dictionaries acknowledge the possibility of same-sex marriage (e.g., American Heritage, 2009). Given the lexicographic situation, it is therefore misleading (at best) and false (at worst) to suggest that a move to same-sex marriage would change the meaning of the English word “marriage” as it is presently defined.
Have I missed the point? When opponents of SSM invoke the specter of “redefinition,” perhaps they are not talking about the meanings of words at all; perhaps they are talking about the meaning of marriage itself. But it is quite unclear what it means to speak of the “the meaning of marriage.” Did the meaning of voting change when blacks and women were allowed to vote? Will the meaning of military service change when gays and lesbians are allowed to serve? These questions are not just hard to answer: They are obscure. If the objection implicit in this talking point is that it would be wrong to change the meaning, not of a word, but of a thing, then the objection requires clarification which to my knowledge it has not received.
For reasons that remain mysterious, people respond emotionally when they are told that SSM would amount to a “redefinition” of marriage. But it is demagoguery to exploit this fact for political purposes if the charge is either false or irrelevant or obscure, as I believe it is. Intellectual integrity may not be the only virtue, but it counts for a great deal in my opinion. If opponents of SSM cannot explain the charge of redefinition and its moral force, they should drop it. The only defensible claim in vicinity is that a move to SSM would involve a change in the law and in society. But when the point is put in this way, it no longer sounds like an objection. The substantive question is whether this change would be for the better. The rhetoric of redefinition obscures this fact; it has no place in a serious discussion of the issue.
Gideon Rosen is a professor of philosophy. He can be reached at grosen@princeton.edu.
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