"You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. [] As a result you can use the word ... to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of all human feelings. You can get him to practice, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided."
--- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.
Lewis' focus in this passage was on the word democracy but the implications here go far beyond that. The types and choices of words we use in speaking has been subtly manipulated by political, academic and media elites to the point of creating a universal assumption. This same assumption is continually perpetuated by the same elites and we buy into it without question. Why? Well, it must be true of course. After all, the politicians talk that way (they never answer a direct question directly so they must be really smart). Those college and university professors, doctors and lawyers with all the MD's and DD's and PhD's after their names talk that way cause they're experts don't you know! Besides, they're on TV so they must be important.
My intent is most certainly not to disparage academic disciplines nor the people who practice them nor do I mean to suggest that all politicians are wicked or that all news journalists are dishonest. My intent is to point out that linguistic development over the last fifty or so years has taken a definite turn for the worse and our thinking and behaving is following suit.
Under the guise of 'political correctness' (the abominable spawn of the equally abominable 'multiculturism') we have been duped into accepting (even if subliminally) ideas, lifestyles and behaviours that, were it not for the introduction or manipulation of certain 'magic' words might have remained universally derided and modestly hidden.
Gay and Gender - two words that have morphed into something totally other than their original meanings and enthroned themselves with their morphed meanings into common speech to the point that no one hardly gives it a second thought.
Gay, by classical definition means, "mirthful, merry; bright-coloured, showy".
Likewise, Gender, classically has never had any other application outside of it's grammatical context: "kind, sort; any of the three 'kinds', masculine, feminine and neuter, of nouns, adjectives and pronouns".
I fail to see where this has any relation whatever to those afflicted with the desire to practice sodomy. In fact, according to R.V. Young, Professor of English at North Carolina State University:
"This English word [homosexual] is itself a very recent coinage. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, both “homosexual” and “homosexuality” first appeared in English in 1892, along with “heterosexual” and “heterosexuality,” in an English translation of Richard von Kraft-Ebing’s Psychopathologia Sexualis (1886) and turn up again five years later in Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex.
In other words, only in the late nineteenth century, when physicians began discussing sexual perversion as a medical rather than a moral problem in Latin treatises intended only for the learned and required a neutral, clinical term, was there a perceived need to refer to “homosexuality.” Moreover, it is not at all clear that the originators of the term had precisely in mind what is usually meant by “homosexuality” in contemporary parlance.
Yet, our contemporary parlance has universally adopted these words with their morphed meanings. Gender has come to mean the distinction between male and female and the word sex has become an action. Professor Young goes on to explain:
"The imposition upon an ingenuous public of the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” required a prior bit of linguistic legerdemain, namely, the redefinition of “sex” and the displacement of its principal original function by the term “gender.”
Latin provides the root (sexus or secus, probably from “cut” or “sever,” but more pertinently to “divide” or “halve”) for the English word “sex” and for its Romance language equivalents. Since the twentieth century, the word “sex” first evokes the specific notion of sexual intercourse and everything associated with it rather than the simple division of a species into male and female, or the division of humanity into men and women. “Sex” now means primarily an activity rather than a state of being, as in the awkward and ugly, but ubiquitous, phrase, “having sex” (of which the OED attributes the first usage to D. H. Lawrence in 1929).
Once “sex” had acquired this new semantic profile, it became easier to substitute “gender” for “sex” as the denomination of the difference between male and female, man and woman. If the first change, however, was the gradual result of recreation replacing reproduction as the principal association of “sex” in Western culture, the introduction of “gender” as the differentiating term was deliberate and fraught with ideological baggage." []
"Before the sixties, “gender” was largely confined to marking the distinctions between “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neuter” nouns and pronouns in various languages. The gender of a noun is quite often purely arbitrary or, if you will, “socially constructed”; that is, there is no particular reason why the Spanish word for pen (la pluma) is “feminine” while a pencil (el lápiz) is “masculine.” Or why in Latin, French, and Spanish the hand (manus, la main, la mano) is “feminine,” while the foot (pes, le pied, el pie) is “masculine.”
The application of the term “gender” to the difference between men and women thus implies, without the argument ever being made, that the differential roles of men and women in family and society are as arbitrary as the gender of nouns. The routine use of “gender” to identify as men or women, test-takers, applicants for driver’s licenses and insurance policies, and virtually all those who fill out almost any kind of document marks the bureaucratic imposition of the feminist view of the sexes on society as a whole."
--- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.
Lewis' focus in this passage was on the word democracy but the implications here go far beyond that. The types and choices of words we use in speaking has been subtly manipulated by political, academic and media elites to the point of creating a universal assumption. This same assumption is continually perpetuated by the same elites and we buy into it without question. Why? Well, it must be true of course. After all, the politicians talk that way (they never answer a direct question directly so they must be really smart). Those college and university professors, doctors and lawyers with all the MD's and DD's and PhD's after their names talk that way cause they're experts don't you know! Besides, they're on TV so they must be important.
My intent is most certainly not to disparage academic disciplines nor the people who practice them nor do I mean to suggest that all politicians are wicked or that all news journalists are dishonest. My intent is to point out that linguistic development over the last fifty or so years has taken a definite turn for the worse and our thinking and behaving is following suit.
Under the guise of 'political correctness' (the abominable spawn of the equally abominable 'multiculturism') we have been duped into accepting (even if subliminally) ideas, lifestyles and behaviours that, were it not for the introduction or manipulation of certain 'magic' words might have remained universally derided and modestly hidden.
Gay and Gender - two words that have morphed into something totally other than their original meanings and enthroned themselves with their morphed meanings into common speech to the point that no one hardly gives it a second thought.
Gay, by classical definition means, "mirthful, merry; bright-coloured, showy".
Likewise, Gender, classically has never had any other application outside of it's grammatical context: "kind, sort; any of the three 'kinds', masculine, feminine and neuter, of nouns, adjectives and pronouns".
I fail to see where this has any relation whatever to those afflicted with the desire to practice sodomy. In fact, according to R.V. Young, Professor of English at North Carolina State University:
"This English word [homosexual] is itself a very recent coinage. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, both “homosexual” and “homosexuality” first appeared in English in 1892, along with “heterosexual” and “heterosexuality,” in an English translation of Richard von Kraft-Ebing’s Psychopathologia Sexualis (1886) and turn up again five years later in Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex.
In other words, only in the late nineteenth century, when physicians began discussing sexual perversion as a medical rather than a moral problem in Latin treatises intended only for the learned and required a neutral, clinical term, was there a perceived need to refer to “homosexuality.” Moreover, it is not at all clear that the originators of the term had precisely in mind what is usually meant by “homosexuality” in contemporary parlance.
Yet, our contemporary parlance has universally adopted these words with their morphed meanings. Gender has come to mean the distinction between male and female and the word sex has become an action. Professor Young goes on to explain:
"The imposition upon an ingenuous public of the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” required a prior bit of linguistic legerdemain, namely, the redefinition of “sex” and the displacement of its principal original function by the term “gender.”
Latin provides the root (sexus or secus, probably from “cut” or “sever,” but more pertinently to “divide” or “halve”) for the English word “sex” and for its Romance language equivalents. Since the twentieth century, the word “sex” first evokes the specific notion of sexual intercourse and everything associated with it rather than the simple division of a species into male and female, or the division of humanity into men and women. “Sex” now means primarily an activity rather than a state of being, as in the awkward and ugly, but ubiquitous, phrase, “having sex” (of which the OED attributes the first usage to D. H. Lawrence in 1929).
Once “sex” had acquired this new semantic profile, it became easier to substitute “gender” for “sex” as the denomination of the difference between male and female, man and woman. If the first change, however, was the gradual result of recreation replacing reproduction as the principal association of “sex” in Western culture, the introduction of “gender” as the differentiating term was deliberate and fraught with ideological baggage." []
"Before the sixties, “gender” was largely confined to marking the distinctions between “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neuter” nouns and pronouns in various languages. The gender of a noun is quite often purely arbitrary or, if you will, “socially constructed”; that is, there is no particular reason why the Spanish word for pen (la pluma) is “feminine” while a pencil (el lápiz) is “masculine.” Or why in Latin, French, and Spanish the hand (manus, la main, la mano) is “feminine,” while the foot (pes, le pied, el pie) is “masculine.”
The application of the term “gender” to the difference between men and women thus implies, without the argument ever being made, that the differential roles of men and women in family and society are as arbitrary as the gender of nouns. The routine use of “gender” to identify as men or women, test-takers, applicants for driver’s licenses and insurance policies, and virtually all those who fill out almost any kind of document marks the bureaucratic imposition of the feminist view of the sexes on society as a whole."
Part of the tragedy of this imposition, so it seems to me, is the upheaval it has brought about within Christianity concerning the role of women in the Church. Some say women can serve as ministers/pastors/priests, some say no. Theological arguments and theoretical cases both for and against abound but my point here is not to make a case either for or against women's ordination. My point is to draw attention to how two separate issues - women's ordination and approval of the sodomitical lifestyle in the Church - has become, in a Siamese twin-like relationship, a single issue. If one makes an in-depth search of the myriad churches/religious organizations calling themselves Christian who permit or approve of women's ordination, one will find that nine out of ten times the same group will also approve/accept/ordain sodomites (although there are a few exceptions). Accompanied by the magic words of "social justice", "inclusiveness", "equality", the sodomite ideological agenda has attached itself to the feminist ideological agenda and the two are happily causing chaos across the ecclesiological board.
This need not be so. These are two separate issues and should be treated as such. One is essential to salvation and the other is not. As a priest whom I know and love once remarked, "It is entirely possible to be a practicing woman and be without sin". I personally know and believe that there are many orthodox Christian women who have a valid priestly vocation. Whether they act on this or not depends on their own decision to pursue it and finding an orthodox Christian jurisdiction that has a need for such ministry and willing to permit it but without the ideological baggage. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of public example that gives reason for the scepticism surrounding the women's ordination issue but there are good examples also, perhaps just not as public. Let each case be treated on its own merits and without universal assumptions predicated on "linguistic legerdemain".
Professor Young again: The words in which we express our ideas have consequences. To insist that words be used rationally and consistently is a first small step toward recovering moral reason. We should, therefore, refuse to accept “gender” as a relativistic substitute for the fundamental difference indicated by “sex,” while the latter term is expropriated to mean any kind of physical coupling. Above all, we should not acquiesce in the labels “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” when we are referring to men and women.
To concede the validity of such linguistic novelties is to allow the ideologues of the sexual revolution to control the terms of the debate. “Male” and “female,” “masculine” and “feminine,” designate normative components of actual human nature: anatomical, physiological, affective, and rational. []
"No really existing class of persons of a specific, distinct nature corresponds to the word “homosexual” in the way that men and women are distinct, complementary kinds of human being. A claim for specific “homosexual rights” is, therefore, frivolous, and the word is merely an ideological construct aimed at undermining the sexual norms inscribed in human nature".
We Christians should be acutely aware of the words and phrases we use to communicate - verbal and written - and especially in everyday conversation. To commonly use such terms as 'gay', 'lesbian', 'transgender' and even 'homosexual' in their modern socially constructed meanings is the same as granting credibility, acknowledgement and (implied) acceptance of modern immoral social constructs. We simply do not have to play this game.
Now some may contend that this is unrealistic, especially in the context of the modern workplace. I do not think so. And I certainly do not advocate the usage of vulgar, slang or otherwise unkind words when referring to anyone, no matter who or what they are. Nor do I mean to suggest useless chatter filled with pointless platitudes (although in some situations this may actually be useful if not the safest thing to do). But in all cases let us choose words of love, words of mercy and words that heal and let our silence speak to the rest.
"It is better to remain silent and to be than to talk and not be. Teaching is good if the teacher also acts. Now there was one Teacher Who 'spoke and it was made', and even what He did in silence is worthy of the Father. He who has the word of Jesus can truly listen also to His silence, in order to be perfect, that he may act through his speech and be known by his silence." ---
St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians.
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The full text of R.V. Young's article may be found here:
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