BY Chris - Apr 22, 2013
Orthodox? I Thought he was a Catholic.
So, Tony Abbott recently said that, in his opinion, “the orthodox definition of marriage as between a man and… ah… a woman should continue…”.The punctuation in that previous sentence might look a little rocky, but it is very difficult to transliterate tortuous ‘aaaahhhhh’s and the weird, inappropriate pauses when he puts his “The Effort of Speaking is Causing Me to Have a Stroke” face on.
Anyway, this led me to wonder which “orthodox” definition he was referring to? Surely the OED is one of the most orthodox definitions for English speakers who are not American?
Oxford English Dictionary
noun
Hmmm. Perhaps he failed to read to the bottom? It is, after all, a lot of reading – something to which he is known to be averse. Or perhaps he believes the third point is similar to the example of musical fusion – an alternative usage, so to speak, and not orthodox at all.
Another alternative is that he has fallen victim to this worrying trend of Americanisation and was referencing Webster.
Merriam-Webster
Well, no. The same sex bit is in the first section – the “executive summary” if you will. There’s no way even he could have missed that. So which definition is he referring to? Its definition under current Australian law? But this is not the “orthodox” definition. It is the “legal” definition. The definition, in fact, that is at issue and which is sufficiently disputed in this country as to be quite far from “orthodox” indeed.