Redefining Marriage

With DOMA down and all this talk about homosexuals redefining marriage, a thought occurred to me today. Lets try an experiment.

We're going to take the word Lion and redefine it. First up.... lets get Merriam-Webster's take on this.

A large heavily built social cat (Panthera leo) of open or rocky areas chiefly of sub-Saharan Africa though once widely distributed throughout Africa and southern Asia that has a tawny body with a tufted tail and a shaggy blackish or dark brown mane in the male

We end up with something like the picture shown in most dictionaries. You have this strong, feline with a mane. Highly predatory, and dangerous to humans.

Now, lets start toying with the definition.

Lets remove the Panthera leo from the definition. We don't need to appeal to a higher power such as science to define words. It's too restrictive.

There's also the Tsavo lions, which are maneless. If we keep the current definition, we exclude them. So, lets remove any reference to having a mane. The Tsavo lions were also grey, so we should remove the colour references.

Heavily built is such a subjective term. How does one define heavily built? There's no ground for determining what heavily built really means. My brother is heavily built, but only 5'4". My brother-in-law is heavily built and 6'3". So, lets just ignore this as well since the term is unreliable.

I've seen these lions in zoos all over the United States. To limit them to just Africa doesn't seem quite right. So, lets remove the Africa and regional references from the definition.

What do we have for a definition?

A large heavily built social cat.

Here's an image that's included in our definition.

Whether you agree with the logic of how I came to this new definition or not doesn't matter. What matters is that I haven't changed the nature of the original animal. Before we started redefining Lion, a Lion (itself) was what everyone traditionally considered it to be. Does that mean through the redefining of Lion that we've altered the original creature? Absolutely not. We just now have an expanded understanding of what is included in the new definition of Lion.

Now that a tabby can be considered a lion, we can start using phrases like "traditional lion" or making reference to places where such a lion would appear. We could say a lion, like in the Lion King.

Ultimately, by homosexuals redefining marriage, they're doing the same thing. Christians now use terms like "Traditional Marriage" or "Biblical Marriage" as reference points to what they mean. When forced to describe their version of marriage, Christians must unpack it using what society considers an archaic definition. It doesn't change what they're in favor of, just how long it takes to get the point across.