MODEST PROPOSAL

Let’s talk marriage.

Not the institution, I mean the word itself.  The question of whether gay couples should have the right to get married just like everyone else has made it a controversial word all over the country.

Politics is the right to fight but here design, as everywhere in my view, can offer a solution.

In fact, there is a simple design change that can completely resolve this issue because this is a typographic problem with type solution.  An alphabetic one in fact, swift as a poke on the keyboard.  With it we could give gays the status and rights they seek while at the same time protecting the others from diluting their vows.  This modest proposal will cure all the ill will with one swift switch of letters.

The proposition is this: allow gay couples the unalienable right to get narried.

No, that is no typo; it is a brilliant insight. 

This is a Narriage Proposal.

All we have to do is change the word that loving gay couples use to seal their commitment.  Change it to narriage, which stands for not-marriage. Think about it. 

With this plan in place, gay couples could legally and openly propose narriage, have a narriage ceremony, get narried, and even have their narriage annulled, if it came to that sad state of affairs known so well to couples who are currently you-know-what.

Marriage, the great and hallowed, would remained unchanged, unchallenged, and unmarred.  And an entirely new institution – a virtual twin but not a cojoined one – would be created to honor these other unions.

Besides being simple and swift, the proposal also has the advantage that all fluid changes have.  This is known in design as the rule of adjacency.  The change is so close to the original that it requires only minor behavioral adjustments.  Like color television after black and white, or ear buds after headphones.  In this case just one teensy hop to the left on the keyboard for all those documents that have to be typed, and the merest flick of the tongue and purse of the lips in common speech.  Existing master documents could be easily converted with a deft swipe of whiteout to get rid of the last stroke of the capital letter M, or the last hump of the lower-case m. 

It is a rewriter’s dream.

I can hear the critics already: this is nothing but a linguistic trick!  We’re protecting an institution not a word!  We’re saving civilization from sin not spelling! 

But every debate about this comes down to that word itself.  Not communion, not commitment, not co-habiting...but marriage.  Marriage through the ages, marriage in the bible, marriage in the courts, in the hearts of men and women.  The word is the very heart of the matter – and the natter, if you want to be funny about it.

But I say, let us not be slaves to the word.  Let us liberate the type from the stereotype!  What we have here is merely a familiar line-up of letters and only the first one will change.  Should we divide ourselves over a single M?  Let us leave marriage to the marriageable and narriage to those who would narry.  Fellow citizens I ask you, would you rather use a sword to carve an amendment to the constitution or take a red pen and simply amend the dictionary?

Say amend somebody!