If this poster contributes to answer your first question, spindoc...

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=26789

you'll be left gagging.

I just object to the word 'mariage' in the issue of homosexual unions.

The word already has a definate meaning of a union between a male and a female. Leave that as is.

If same sex couples want a legal union, I have no objection to that but they should come up with a word, or words, that mean just that.

I believe they want the word marriage because it indicates a higher moral standard.

Are they really looking to get a legal union, or just after a measure of respectability?

Gay marriage is both an impossibility and an inevitability – an impossibility by definition, an inevitability because we live in an era of sloppy thinking.

Gay marriage is the silliest issue to be taken seriously in the last 40 years, so it is not surprising that those who support it subject those who oppose it are to hate speech as cover for the weakness of their arguments in favour, which are about as valid as declaring that a bus should be called a turnip.

Marriage does not discriminate against gays. No one, gay or not, can marry a person of the same sex.

There is something called marriage – the exclusive and life-long union of one man and one woman – that gays can have but most definitely do not want. They want something different – the exclusive and life-long union of one man and another man or of one woman and another woman. Instead of pursuing this aim, they and their supporters attempt an arguably unconstitutional word theft by creating mass hysteria about something called “marriage equality” and calling those who disagree religious bigots.

This is as logical as if I, a vegetarian, demanded the right to eat meat, meaning, not the flesh of animals, but the relabelling of vegetables as meat, under the slogan of “meat equality”, and called my logically-minded opponents vegephoic bigots.

I write, not from any religious motivation, but as an English teacher from the era before words meant whatever anyone wanted them to mean. But I recognise that in a few years, “marriage” will be redefined and there will be no word left in the English language that means “the exclusive and life-long union of one man and one woman”. The inevitability of this triumph of illogicality does not mean I should not point out its foolishness before it happens. Once it happens, we can get on to a campaign for oranges to be called lemons.

But the thing is Chris, words do mean whatever we want them to mean - they are just cultural conventions. I agree with most of what you said, but I come from the other direction. I have no idea why the government has to have a definition of marriage at all. Why not leave it up to individuals what they call their relationship? It's not a matter of human rights, it's just a matter of semantics.

re Chris C's post,

As a matter of clear thinking, 'the exclusive and life-long union of one man and one woman' need not be defined as 'marriage'.

GrahamY is right Chris C… "It is a usage which regulates the laws and conventions of speech" as Horace wrote in Ars Poetica – though admittedly this would have been in Latin and around 2030 years ago.

Being slightly more up-to-date the word marriage patently didn't exclusively meet your meaning at the beginning of the 16th century when Henry Tudor 'married' his brother Arthur's widow before demonstrating five more times that he didn't agree with your definition.

Still if we are going to pretend to be pedantic should you modify your proposed campaign to: geoluhreads to be called lemons?