In the overwhelming surge of global delight which has followed Barack Obama’s success in the US election, other decisions made by the American public on polling day have received slightly less coverage here in the UK. That is to say they haven’t been accompanied by 12-page colour supplements and wall-to-wall Media analysis.

While I am sure decisions made on funding for local police and taxation for eco-projects all had serious import for their respective communities, the specific proposition put to the citizens of California, Arizona and Florida, was possibly the most contentious.

It dealt with the issue of same-sex marriages.

Proposition 8, the most publicised of these, largely due to the amount of money spent on its support, sought to overturn California State Law sanctioning marriage between individuals of the same gender. On the day of the election it was passed with a slim if definite majority. Many who voted for it came from the same Afro-American community who voted for Obama and his promise of Change. However this same demographic, being deeply religious, found it impossible to go against the words of The Bible, disappointing thousands of gay Californian couples legally wed since June of this year.

This notion of gay marriage has exercised me for some time. Perhaps it is down to my own inability to find a suitable wife of the female persuasion. In fact at times I begin to wonder whether a domestically-obsessed house-boy might be a better option as old age and infirmity set in.

But what has troubled me more than any notion of two men or two women living and loving together - to state the obvious, that doesn’t bother me at all - is the appropriation of language. This may sound like a somewhat pretentious way of looking at things but I have to admit I do find it troubling. The fact that words which have meaning - meaning which Society as a whole understands, acknowledges and accepts - can simply be re-worked and re-defined because of the will of a large if motivated minority, somehow sits awkwardly on my shoulders.

“They’re only words, pal. Get over it,” I hear you say. But if they were only words, why would the various minorities, feeling put upon by the use or lack of use of such words, make such a fuss about them in the first place? And once these words, these terms, are called into question, how come the majority, for so long quite happy in their understanding of what certain words mean, not only get up in arms about them, but spend millions of dollars to protect what they perceive to be their meaning.

So I guess words are important.

When this religious debate first kicked-off over same-sex marriages, and mark my words it is a big deal, a big enough deal to create schisms within the Anglican Church, I thought the Bishops and Archbishops had missed a trick.

Following the advice of their crucified champion, I would have thought a turn-of-the-cheek approach might have been advisable, if employed with a certain wiliness. Let the gay community take the word ‘marriage’ and simply come up with another term which suits your needs more completely. I was thinking ‘Lord-enjoined’ perhaps. As in “Are you married? No, we’re Lord-enjoined”. Whether that means diddly-squat would largely depend on the degree of your religious leanings. The gays get their marriage-tag, the God squad feel suitably blessed. Everyone’s a winner.

But something nagged at me. In a way this all seems to be something of a moveable feast. As it is, the gay community has seemed to vacillate in recent years when it comes to their choice of self-description. Since the 1970’s the term ‘Queer’ was seen as pejorative. Up until then, before the term political-correctness had even been coined, homosexuals were abused and taunted with every name under the sun. It was thanks to a vociferous and politicised movement that Gay Lib came about and with it a new vocabulary.

Without much of a shrug, the wider world accepted that a word which had previously been associated with girls in summer dresses, pastel colours and a lot of skipping and jumping, was now a rainbow-coloured umbrella for a section of society, certain members of which enjoyed night-time shenanigans which to a God-fearing heterosexual at least, seemed anything but gay. Pictures of muscular men in SS caps, leather shorts and handle-bar moustaches challenged all previous notions of the meaning of the word. Nevertheless, the world learnt to live with it. As long as ‘they’ weren’t doing anyone any harm. Well no one who didn’t want any harm done, that is.

And so we now have a similar debate about ‘marriage’.

You can see the Conservatives hunkering down once more. “What more do these people want?” they ask. “Give them an inch and they always want more.” And that is something which is undoubtably true. Ahem...

But do these traditionalists have a point? Is this a vocabulary land-grab we should sit back and allow?

Ultimately I suppose it comes down to what you consider marriage to be about, what you consider it for.

Is it for promulgation of the species? Strength in the family unit? Protection of the community? Child-bearing certainly does seem to be an essential ingredient of marriage, which isn’t to say couples who are unable to conceive are any less married. But the only reason they can’t conceive - should they wish to - is because of a medical condition, or old age.

A man and a man cannot conceive for obvious reasons. Nor can a woman and a woman unless they get a little outside help. It’s not an aberration of nature, a medical mishap, it’s the way we as animals were made. It’s biology. A fact of life. Now whether this has anything to do with the institution of marriage is another matter. Plenty of people manage to have kids without being married, although society seems quite happy to state that this is not an optimal state of affairs.

So are we prepared to cloud the issue further in order to keep a minority happy?

No one seems to be questioning Gay rights. Okay some people are, but not the majority who voted for Proposition 8. Civil partnerships, shared rights under the law, complete parity in all matters social and financial... that’s surely unarguable. We’re all equal human beings after all. Right?

Gay opponents of Proposition 8 state the issue is about dignity; for their relationships to be seen in the same terms as Straight couples is a matter of decency and Human Rights. Yet I still wonder whether this positive outcome and shift in perception can be done merely by the stroke of a judge’s pen.

So what’s the answer? Who gets to decide what someone is called? The person who feels they are being discriminated against, or the majority who blindly continue calling someone something they have no idea is offensive.

We’re beginning to see the same difficulties arise with the success of Obama.

In America the term ‘Black’ has come to be seen as a somewhat ugly term, hence the use of the catch-all phrase ‘Afro-American’. Yet here in the UK, describing Obama as America’s first Black president causes less than a ripple. It’s only when morons like Silvio Berlusconi chip-in with what they consider an amusing remark that we notice just how far certain parts of Europe lag behind on the path towards inclusivity.

But it does seem to me that we are presently lost in a forest of words. Should how people wish to be perceived always dictate how the world perceives them?

‘Nazis’ was an abbreviation for National Socialists. If the far right in the US hated Nazis as much as they seem to hate Socialism we might be getting somewhere.

So what’s the best answer? A popular vote? God help us. We know full well that in the UK that would probably bring back capital punishment. Some things are simply not safe left in the hands of the great unwashed, and by that I mean the rabid reactionism of the opinion-stirring tabloid press.

When it comes down to it, language evolves. You can’t force new terminology on people. Even if they know they are supposed to say something in a different way - Bi-Racial, Special Needs, Gender-Neutral - if it doesn’t come naturally to them it only re-enforces the original prejudice, causing resentment that personal thoughts are being forcibly subjugated, self-censored, only given free reign through the mouths of ‘dangerous comedians’ or whispered behind closed doors.

Perhaps all we can do is let life evolve. The more society comes to terms with long-term gay relationships, the more used society is to seeing them succeed, the more likely it is to perceive them on parallel and equal terms.

One thing we have seen this week with the inspiring success of Barack Obama, is that when the world is ready, change is both sweeping, dynamic and powerful.

When that happens, nothing can stand in its way.

An addendum:

An older friend points out to me that back in the 70’s, the term GAY was actually an acronym for ‘Good As You’, and was first seen on a banner beneath which homosexuals marched at Stonewall.

Attention must also be drawn to the recent track by songstress Katy Perry ‘You’re So Gay’ where the term is used in a fashionably derogatory manner. Radio One DJ Chris Moyles, listened to by millions of UK youngster every morning, has been doing the same for some time without any censure from his BBC employers.