Language Matters

Via the Romenesko media blog, New York Magazine has caught wind of a memo from the Associated Press reminding its staffers to only use the words “husband” and “wife” in reference to heterosexual marriages. “Generally AP uses couples or partners to describe people in civil unions or same-sex marriages,” the memo reads, noting that exceptions can be made for direct quotations of “if those involved have regularly used those terms (‘Smith is survived by his husband, John Jones’).” New York blogger Joe Coscarelli gets an AP spokesperson on record as explaining that “”This was, as far as we intended, a restatement of our style via a staff memo. The focus was on letting people call themselves what they feel is right.” Uh, so if someone feels it’s right to call his wife “fork” and himself “spoon,” that’s the standard the AP should go by?

Coscarelli’s reaction pretty much mirrors my own:

 It’s unclear what confusion, if any, such differentiation is meant to avoid, or what purpose it would serve otherwise, considering acceptance for gay marriage (both legal and cultural) is only moving in one direction. Rather, it just seems like another outdated — and inexact — distinction that will have to be rectified at some point in the not-so-distant future. Whether or not members of a couple refer to one another as such in words, a man legally married to another man is his “husband.”

Coming on the heels of the AP’s recent decision to retire the term “homophobia,” which was applauded by conservatives for semantic accuracy (disapproval of homosexuality, they claim, is not an irrational fear but a reasoned moral stance) and criticized by liberals for whitewashing bigotry, this is an interesting development. In my mind, the AP was on firmer ground with that decision, as it’s true that, as the standards editor said at the time, “It’s ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don’t have. It seems inaccurate. Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case.” But refusing to respect a state’s decision to bestow the term “marriage” on a union – any union, whether between a man and a woman or two men – seems like, to coin a phrase, semantic activism. Once married, a man becomes a husband. Should it really matter whom he’s married to? If a state grants all the privileges of marriage, from tax status to parental rights, on a gay couple, the AP should respect that. And unilaterally deciding not to permit some of those privileges – the right, in this case, to be called a husband – simply because of the spouses’ sex smacks of discrimination.

Part of me understands the AP’s reluctance to rock the boat. After all, its stories are carried by papers across nation, in blue states where no one would bat an eye at two wives or two husbands, and in red ones where presumably some readers would take offense at the terminology. But seeking to mollify those who might be offended by a fact of life – in some states, “marriage” can now be between two men, whether or not conservatives consider that marriage “real” – subjugates language to a political agenda. “Couples” and “partners” are euphemisms designed to please people who won’t accept that, in places like Massachusetts and New York, a husband can now be married to a husband. This is not an Orwellian rabbit hole the AP should jump down.

Though I don’t agree with it, I suppose I can also intellectually understand the case conservatives might make against the word “husband” or “wife.” They would argue, I imagine, that using the term redefines marriage, because a marriage is by definition a union between a husband and wife. You can’t, they would say, have one without the other, as each is defined by its counterpart. You cannot have a husband without a wife; we even have a different word for a man whose wife has died: widower. When he no longer has a wife, his status shifts, and can no longer be accurately described as a husband. But a husband in a gay marriage, though without a wife, doesn’t lack a counterpart. He still has a complement, even if it’s not a complement that meets with conservative approval.

Those who argue that using the word “husband” would redefine marriage have already lost the argument. In states where more than civil unions are permitted, the legal bond between two men or two women is now defined as a marriage, not a “coupleship” or a “partnership.” Those words are actually two of the worst the AP could pick, as they each refer to other things. Coscarelli’s characterization of the language as “inexact” is spot-on. A couple could be a boyfriend and girlfriend (or boyfriend and boyfriend, as the case may be), a fiancé and fiancée, or even just two people who’ve been on a handful of casual dates. Legally, a partnership is also something different, as there are states that permit domestic partnerships or civil unions that have emphatically rejected the expansion of the term “marriage.” Ironically, it’s generally conservatives who seek to differentiate between partnerships and marriages, yet the AP seeks to please this constituency by conflating the two terms. (Republicans often argue that, while states can recognize domestic partnerships, they should stay out of what is traditionally called marriage. Language matters, they say. In theory, this should make them uncomfortable with the idea of confusing partnerships with marriages, though I would wager that they’d take a practical stance and declare any other word to be better than the sacred “husband” and “wife.”)

A more precise word, if the AP were determined to find one, would be “spouse,” as members of any marriage can be referred to as spouses. Still, even “spouse,” in its refusal to put gay marriages on the same level as heterosexual marriages, denigrates a relationship that the state has deemed equal under the law. The law, not social mores, should be the first resource when the AP decides which words to use in its articles. It mirrors the debate over the use of the term “illegal immigrant” (versus the supposedly less offensive “undocumented immigrant”), but in this case the argument seems even more clean-cut. There is no law about what to call someone who sneaked over the border, but there are laws in some states about what to call the union of two men: a marriage. (For what it’s worth, I would defer to the law on the immigration issue as well: If someone broken the law, if he has done something illegal, then “illegal” is indeed the correct word.)

The AP isn’t in the business of second-guessing voters and legislatures; it already accepts the law of the land and calls a marriage a marriage in the states that permit it. The wire service should go all the way, bestowing all the rights that the relationship confers. “Husband” may not be a privilege written explicitly into the law, but it is one of the rights we have come to associate with marital status, a privilege which is explicitly spelled out. There are states in which gay couples can only be domestic partners or unwed couples; in those cases, the AP’s words of choice are accurate. But for a Massachusetts couple celebrating the hard-won right to call their relationship a marriage, shouldn’t that couple also be able to enjoy the right to be referred to in the language used for any other married couple? After all, isn’t it also a “redefinition” to take the official definition of marriage and refuse to acknowledge all its implications? In many states, a gay marriage is officially something different from a partnership, just as a heterosexual marriage is something different from a long-term relationship. Once married, a man and a woman are no longer boyfriend and girlfriend; they become husband and wife. Likewise, two men in a marriage – not a partnership – are husband and husband, not partners.

The AP doesn’t bow to so-called traditionalists by inserting scare quotes to indicate a gay marriage (as in “homosexual ‘marriage’”), so it shouldn’t kowtow on the husband/wife issue either. It almost seems more radical to me to refuse the label, as it strips the individual of a right the state has conferred: the right to be someone else’s husband. Who is the AP to decide that those marriages, which voters have decided to place on the same level as heterosexual marriage, should be treated any differently? Once the AP declares itself – or the cultural critics it seeks to pacify – to be the arbiter, what’s to prevent it from deciding “partner” is now the term for members of every marriage? Or, to return to a ridiculous scenario, to decide that marriages now comprise a “spoon” and “fork”? If the state recognizes two things as equal, the AP’s language should reflect that. To do otherwise is to make the unilateral judgment that how it discusses facts – the existence of a marriage between two men or two women – should be dictated not by the laws as they are but the laws as conservatives wish them to be. The right is notorious for disdaining the “reality based community,” but that’s the one the rest of us happen to live in. The reality is that in some places two men make up a marriage, not a partnership. The AP’s language should reflect that.