Don’t Say Gay
A friend of mine took some not unjust heat recently for using a crude term to describe men who engage in certain abominable acts. But what are we supposed to say? In terms of clarity, “sodomite” hits the mark, but your interlocutors will either snicker and put palm to face, or else take such offense that you’ll send them off with a limp.
If experience is any guide, one or two limpers are already fast at work writing me a letter to cancel their subscriptions to Touchstone and to inform me that “gay” and “homosexual” are the appropriate terms. But let’s state the obvious—crude terms offend because the acts are offensive. “Gay” and “homosexual” are merely euphemistic labels for the category of men and women who perform these acts.
Ironically, these euphemisms serve a similar purpose to the once-common practice of referring to all such activity as “unspeakable acts.” That phrase appeared often in newspaper accounts and government documents up until the latter half of the twentieth century. Black’s Law Dictionary listed such behavior as a crimen innominatum (“unnamed or unnamable crime”).
Today, the woke will cancel anyone brazen enough to utter “unspeakable acts,” on the grounds that to speak so is to pass a negative judgment against the acts one refuses to name. At the same time, just about everyone, from the woke to the Christian, will take equal offense at anyone who names the act!
So, since “gay” is mere euphemism, and “sodomite” is too explicit, and “unspeakable acts” too church-lady, then, once again, what are we supposed to say? A friend writes that he once caught a lecture by a British law professor who used the Latin expression, crimen abhominabilis contra naturam non nominandum inter Christianos, “an abominable crime against nature not to be mentioned among Christians.” But de quo non loquendum (LO-QWEN-DOOM), “of that which must not be spoken,” will do in a pinch.
J. Douglas Johnson is Executive Editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on culture from the online archives
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
34.1—January/February 2021
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher by Hans Boersma
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
more from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
on Down Syndrome & the Lives That Matter by David F. Watson
35.2—Mar/Apr 2022
on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery
33.3—May/June 2020
Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East by Carrie Frederick Frost
Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy by Laura S. Jansson by Agnes R. Howard
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
