When the meaning of a word is wilfully changed to mean something it does not mean, cannot mean and has never meant, when its meaning is corrupted, communication with it is also corrupted. Language exists for communication, it exist to enable communication: efficient, direct, simple, straightforward communication. When a word is corrupted it can longer be used to represent the idea or state that it once represented, so communication with it becomes so corrupted that it becomes impossible.
At the moment if a man says, 'I am married' we know instantly without any explanation that he is talking about a state in which he is the husband and a woman is his wife. If a woman says, 'I am married', we know instantly without any explanation that she is talking about a state in which she is the wife and a man is her husband. And if we read the same phrases in a book written hundreds of years ago or thousands, or hear it in old film, we have the same instant knowledge. All the explanation needed is in the meaning of the word. Communication is direct, efficient, instant, simple.
But if the corrupters of marriage, both the state and the word, have their way, it will no longer be possible to communicate about marriage directly and efficiently. And communication with the past will be lost. For then when people say 'I am married' it will be necessary to go into a long-winded explanation, because they may mean what marriage has always meant and truly means, or they mean that they using it to describe the so-called 'sexual' cohabitation of two men, or two women, or five men and three women, or sixteen women and two men, or one man and five women, etc., etc. Communication with the word will be so corrupted that it will be impossible. The word will no longer have a useful meaning, it will be useless. It will have to be replaced by sentences and paragraphs.
There is some irony in that. People who want to be able to call themselves married--to be 'equal' with truly married people--can do so only by changing the word for the state. If they succeed they will only be applying a changed word to themselves, they will not be applying the reality of what it once meant. The reality cannot change, regardless of what they do to the word. Homosexuals cannot have sexual union; therefore they cannot be married. If they call something else marriage they will still not have the sexual-physical-mental-emotional-and-spiritual union that is what marriage is, they will have only the word for it, but it will be a word stripped of meaning, a useless collection of letters.
Yes, words change over time, and may acquire new meanings. Take 'mouse'. It no longer means only a small rodent, or someone who is as timid as one. It also means a device for controlling a computer. That is fine. But the new meaning has not replaced and destroyed the original meanings. So we can still communicate efficiently, using a single word, about rodents and timid people. We can communicate with people in the present day, and with all the people in the past who have used that word in books, other writings and other media. But if the new computer meaning was suddenly written into the law as the only meaning, then communicating about rodents and timid people would no longer be possible with a single word. There would always have to be an explanation to avoid confusion. Simple, direct, efficient communication about rodents and mouse-like timidity would be lost for ever.
'Mouse' is not one of the most important words in the dictionary or in society, but even so its destruction would not be insignificant because it is a word in common use and there is no other word that means the same thing.
And take this sentence: 'He bought a rose for his beloved.' The creates a mental image of man buying a rose, probably red, to give the woman he loves. But if the meaning of 'rose' was changed to mean any plant, to mean whatever you wanted it to mean, to mean something different to everyone, that poetic sentence would become a meaningless, grey, dead thing. And if the sentence was 'He bought a rose to give his beloved on the day they were married', and 'rose', 'beloved' and 'married' have been deprived of their meanings, that
sentence would no longer mean anything.
The Prime Minister has said that if the law is changed it will not affect his marriage. He is wrong. For when the word 'marriage' is corrupted in law, by having its meaning forcibly changed in statute, every true marriage will be corrupted, because in law it will no longer be what it really is--the only true possibility meant by that word. It will be made just one of countless possibilities, and therefore its true state will be made meaningless. No longer will it be a rose, unique and special; it will have been turned into just another weed amongst countless weeds. Including his marriage.
When 'marriage' no longer has a specific meaning that is universally understood, when it is by force of law given a meaning that is different for everyone, it can no longer be used to transmit thoughts from one mind to another. It is socially useless. Language is vital in society; without it there is no society. When we corrupt it we corrupt society. Humpty Dumpty said, 'Words mean whatever I say they mean.' That was in a story, where it was amusing although it was also obvious that it was very stupid--and we all know what happened
to Humpty Dumpty. He fell off the wall and was smashed beyond repair. But if his foolish notion is taken out of the story world into the real world, and is set in the concrete of the law, communication will be corrupted. And when the word legislated into oblivion is one at the very heart of the social fabric and the long history of the world its loss will not be just the corruption of language it will also be the corruption of society. And it will
lead to even worse corruption. The 'What does it matter?', 'Anything goes', 'Why make a fuss?', 'Who cares?' attitude, and the nonsensical notion that such questions are a valid argument, will continue their corrupting, cancerous spread into countless aspects of social functioning. As Shakespeare said, 'It is not and it cannot come to good.'
