Noah Webster Gives His Blessing-Dictionaries recognize same-sex marriage—who knew?

Noah Webster Gives His Blessing Dictionaries recognize same-sex marriage—who knew?
By Daniel RedmanPosted Tuesday, April 7, 2009, at 4:26 PM ET

Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.Opponents of gay marriage generally have relied on two authorities, the Bible and the dictionary—the divine word and the defined word. A 2006 friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of anti-gay-marriage organizations in a Maryland marriage case cited no fewer than seven dictionaries to make its point. And when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage last week, it ignored the state's plea to abide by a dictionary definition that limited marriage to "the legal union of a man and a woman."

But in their latest editions, the dictionaries have begun to switch sides—though until recently, no one seemed to have much noticed. The American Heritage Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary, and Webster's have all added same-sex unions to their definitions of marriage. The Oxford English Dictionary is on the way. The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily broke the news in March about Webster's, reporting that the dictionary had "resolved the argument" over gay marriage by applying the ancient term "to same-sex duos."

more:
http://www.slate.com/id/2215628/pagenum/all/