Thanks to the mutability of language, Obama is in a good position to make the right decision over “whether the government must provide health insurance benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.” Apparently, whatever asshole wrote The Defense of Marriage Act back in 1996 believed “that ‘the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.’” Fortunately, our modern authority on linguistic usage, Wikipedia, contradicts this heteronormative BS:
“The term spouse generally refers to a partner in a marriage:
It may also mean:
- In some usages, a partner in a civil union instead of a proper marriage”
