The arrival of “Fall” for me has always been marked by the resumption of school, not by the autumnal equinox. In my youth, school waited respectfully for Labor Day to resume.
No longer. Fall is here and it’s not quite mid-August.
Although I neither attend nor teach school, another change has arrived, not entirely coincidental, and my Monday evenings will be occupied for a period roughly corresponding to the school year. Accordingly, I’m writing this Monday morning, not expecting to return to it and not expecting to add to it.
It’s a fool’s errand to try to stop language from evolving. But your dictionary is about to get a makeover, and not by evolutionary linguistic change. “Monogamish,” “throuple,” and “wedlease” are coming. We are not adding them by choice, but by the demand of liberal groin piety, which prescribes prostration of language before the 60-cubit monument to sexual liberation it has erected (if I may be allowed the double-entendre) in the city square.
So my advice for the day is to read James Matthew Wilson’s “Monogamish” at Front Porch Republic:
Having dissolved so much, all its advocates seem now to require is to render the word marriage not a reference to a natural formation within human life but as a word that can mean anything the voluntaristic fiat of the modern state proclaims. No wonder that critics of all this, when they do not cite Orwell, wind up citing Lewis Carroll.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 