unspecified object deletion in the cause of equality

[Laurence Horn]

Notice that Mr. Barron knows whom to call.  (Besides our own arnold,
Gregory Ward--while not an ads-er per se--is a fellow traveler.  The
Rev. Sue Anne Steffey and Ms. Hartman I can't vouch for personally.)

larry
================================

The New York Times
May 16, 2004 Sunday

  SECTION: Section 9; Column 1; Society Desk; Pg. 16; FIELD NOTES

  HEADLINE: You May Now Kiss [Label Here]

  BYLINE: By JAMES BARRON

  THE law is one thing. Language is another.

  Tomorrow, the day same-sex marriage is to become legal in
Massachusetts, may be the beginning of a new social era. But the
prospect of same-sex weddings also has some couples, their families,
their friends and the officials who will marry them struggling with
the terminology of marriage.

  Once they have said, ''I do,'' how should they be referred to?
Husbands? Wives? Spouses?

  ''Undoubtedly different people will use different terms,'' said
Arnold M. Zwicky, a visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford.
''Everybody will make their own decision. I'm betting that 'partner'
is the one that's used most often. It's the one that my gay friends
in Massachusetts are using now for themselves and have already told
me they're going to continue to use.''

  Similarly, some ministers have tweaked traditional ceremonies to go
beyond gender neutrality, avoiding endings like ''I now pronounce you
husband and wife'' and telling newlyweds, ''You may now kiss'' -- not
''You may kiss the bride.''

  ''In the commitment ceremonies that I've officiated at, none of the
two women referred to themselves as brides and none of the two men as
bridegrooms,'' said the Rev. Sue Anne Steffey Morrow, a United
Methodist minister who is the school chaplain at the Lawrenceville
School in Lawrenceville, N.J. ''More often than not, it's couple
language -- 'lifelong companion' language, as in, 'I take you to be
my lifelong companion, to have and to hold.' I think actually that
the limitations of 'bridegroom' and 'bride' are helping us create new
language and get closer to the right language for a particular
relationship.''

  But Gregory Ward, chairman of the linguistics department at
Northwestern University, predicted that same-sex couples would adopt
''conventional labels.''

  Professor Ward, who also serves as the caretaker of what he calls
the world's largest lesbian-gay-transsexual bibliography on language,
said: ''What I have heard among lesbian, gay and transsexual partners
is the use of the sex-appropriate term for their spouse, meaning,
whether the person speaking is a man or a woman, they will refer to
their female spouse as their wife. I've heard two men referring to
'my husband' and 'my husband.' There's no ambiguity. They can't be
referring to themselves. If I had to predict, I think that's how the
usage will play out for those couples that choose marriage. For those
that do not, they will continue to use 'partner.' ''

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Sasha Hartman, an account manager in an advertising agency in
Boston, said that she and Alexandra Fennell had discussed and
discarded terms like ''wife'' and ''partner.'' She said that after
their ceremony on Saturday in Rockport, Mass., each would refer to
the other as ''my spouse.''

  ''You don't want all the implications that come with the word
'wife,' '' Ms. Hartman said, ''and the word 'partner' is also
synonymous with a business partner. There's no doubt that our
relationship is much more significant than that.''