Morality - Twisting words to win the battle
Yesterday, I commented on an article by Bashir Goth where he tried to recast an issue as being between religion and rationality, and tried to call his own moral views 'common sense'. Today, I have been bombarded by news stories where similar attempts at twisting and misusing words are being used to try and win the argument.

In Illinois, the battle is heating up over forcing pharmacists to distribute the abortion drug RU-486. Yet instead of calling the drug what it is, a long campaign has been waged and won to identify this drug as a contraceptive. So now pro-abortion 'progressives' get to cast the pharmicists as preventing women from accessing contraceptives.

In Australia, a recent study on the views on Homosexuality has been released. Those who think that homosexuality is immoral are labelled as intolerant. Last time I checked, it wasn't intolerant to label an action such as murder as immoral. In fact, tolerance, in its proper meaning, requires you to think the action or idea is wrong. Otherwise there is nothing to tolerate. Yet we have allowed the word intolerance to be twisted by gay rights activists in order to cast their opponents in a bad light. But it doesn't just stop there. On ABC news radio this morning, instead of just labelling those who think homosexuality is immoral as intolerant, they decided to call them homophobic. Other papers have also jumped on board with this. Yet homophobia is a fear of homosexuals, which is not equivalant to thinking homosexuality is immoral. Once again, words are twisted to score points.

Everyone remembers Terri Schiavo. Well, in Australia, we have our own case now. That of Maria Korp. Here we have a court ruled that artificial feeding was a medical treatment that could be withheld. Giving someone food is not a medical treatment. Just because they are unable to feed themselves is not reason to starve them. Do we allow starvation of premature babies now because they have to be fed artificially?

We need to stop and correct the misuse of words. If you allow your opponent to chose the language, then you have already lost the debate.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Wednesday, July 27, 2005