Why don't we call things what they are? The Planned Parenthood clinics have commercials that say "practice safe love". What they mean is: practice safe SEX. The aisles at the front of the store are for conveniences. What they mean is: impulse section. The government calls it a preemptive strike to implement a regime change. Translation: we shoot first and install a government more to our liking. Apparently all American men need to take drugs for natural male enhancement. Meaning: your dick is too small and you need a penis enlargement. Gay couples can't get married. Translation: gay love is less meaningful and sacred, so we'll give you a different word that (theoretically) means exactly the same thing. I could go on.
The point is that this country has an incredible phobia with language. It's social censoring. After it becomes acceptable to obscure basic human actions like sex behind euphemisms, the situation can only escalate. In the worst cases, we're telling immigrants that they are not entitled to keep their own language if they want to live here. The land of the free and the country that said "bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses..." is actually offended at the idea of making road signs in multiple languages. Tribes and ethnicities around the world often define themselves based on their language. But fear of change or "dilution of language" only breeds more fear. And fear leads to violence.
Language can be used to preach hate or tolerance, to obscure or enlighten, to help or hinder. But words only have the power you give them. If you don't give them power, then all words are neutral and abstract constructions. People give far too much emotional power to words. They become attached to the emotional connotations and that nearly always leads to fear when someone else attaches a different connotation to the same word. Fear of certain "profane words" (which, if you study the history of the word profane and the idea of profanity does NOT refer to curse words). Fear of using certain words to refer to things (it's not sex, it's love). The fear that teaching kids the correct terminology for body parts will lead them into sexual revolt. Certain words were given a negative stigma through disgraceful actions: nigger, Nazi, kike. Should we ban these words altogether? Hell no. If you do, you bury the atrocities that created them. But you can't be afraid of them.
Language is not static. It's a fluid entity. It can be beautiful or terrifying. But it's always moving. That's why it's difficult to rely on words written lifetimes ago: the Constitution (written 200 hundred years ago when the ideas and concepts and even words meant different things) and the bible (written 2000 years years ago and then heavily translated) being two good examples. The meaning we give these words and ideas is not necessarily what they meant to the people that wrote them. That doesn't mean our interpretation is bad or even wrong. It just means that people should be open to differences in interpretation. Anyone who thinks they know the exact meaning of words written centuries before by someone else is full of back-side excrement. That's shit for those of you that want the simple version. I'm not saying there's nothing to learn from long dead authors. There are thousands of works that speak to the human condition today just as they did when they were penned. I'm just saying that we need to be careful in how we interpret "their" meaning versus OUR meaning.
Call things what they are. If we ever want to consider ourselves "enlightened" relative to anything, we have to get rid of our fear of words. We have to stop hiding behind language and semantics. We have to face reality. "Practicing safe love" isn't facing the issue of STDs and unprepared pregnancies. Practicing safe sex is.
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