You all may remember that DeeK and I had a bit of a tiff over gay marriage. He thought that if it meant we couldwin elections- we should table the gay marriage talk for a while. I thought that telling someone to wait (again and again and again) for a right that you already have is cowardly. But if only we had this book (or if I had taken any linguistics classes- damn you community college!) we could have re-framed the debate so that gays don’t loose out and we don’t loose elections.

The republicans have been really amazing at re-framing debates, while us progressives have seen the politcal ball stolen from our hands and run down the other side of the field. I’ll give you an example of how they do it.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the death tax. You know that scary thing that double taxes your children after you’re dead and are just trying to leave them the family farm or business. You know what the death tax really is- it’s estate tax and it only applies to people with very large estates (there is a measure in Washington state to eliminate the estate tax on estates over 2 million dollars- there are only 250 families in the state who would get the benefit. Don’t forget to vote in November!). But it sounds like double taxation. It sounds like this tax is going to leave your greiving widow and crying children destitute to the tax man after your death. Calling it the “death tax” brings to mind some Dickens plot where formerly stable families are forced to rummage though landfills after big, bad, mean government has turned them into the streets.

How about “pro-life”? Are any of the prominent people declaring themselves pro-life trying to abolish the death penalty? Or get nationalized healthcare to improve our atrocious infant death rates? No. So what is it about them that is actually pro-life? Not much except the name. But because they have the name- those of us on the other side of the arguement must be pro-death. So we need to learn how to re-frame the debate so that our ideas are ressonate with the rest of the population.

Many Americans, however, are what Lakoff calls “biconceptual.” In some parts of their lives — at home, say — they behave according to the nurturant-parent model, while in others — perhaps the workplace — they’re more strict-father. The point is, they swing both ways, although in recent years, conservatives have done a much better job at persuading them to the strict-father view of things. This has happened, Lakoff believes, because conservatives really worked at it. Finding themselves out of power in the ’60s and ’70s, they did some serious soul-searching and consolidated their moral view of American political life. They invested heavily in the think tanks, educational institutions and media outlets that figured out how to hone their message so that it penetrated to the very heart of the American political imagination.

If progressives would only do the same thing — get a better grasp on the moral frames that unite them and concentrate on how to express those frames properly — Lakoff believes they could arouse the nurturant-parent models that lie dormant in the minds of most Americans. And they wouldn’t have to betray their ideals or pander to centrists by “skewing right.” They can win back the public (or at least the biconceptuals) “honestly, using framings, both deep and surface, that we really believe and that reveal the truth about our social, economic and political realities.” That’s why much of “Why Freedom?” is devoted to explaining how classic progressive issues like social welfare, universal healthcare, improved public education, fair trade, labor unionization and a less warlike foreign policy can be articulated as forms of freedom.

So back to the marriage equality debate (and that is what it should be called instead of gay marriage). We need to remind people that it is not a special right, it is not creating a class of people who ge to have more access or benefits than you. It is allowing people to have the same benefits as you without diminishing anything that you already recieve.

This is why I use phrases like “forced-pregnancy” instead of “pro-life”: to re-frame the debate and to call the opposition what it is instead of what it wants to be seen as. The more we use these terms – the bigger part of the lexicon they become and so do the ideas behind them.

(oh the spellcheck still ain’t working right- dooda dooda)