What is a word? Here are a couple of dictionary answers: a) a unit of language … that functions as a principal carrier of meaning, b) a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, c) a speech sound or series of speech sounds that … communicates meaning.
The common denominator among these three definitions is the word ‘meaning.’ Words have meanings and are meant to communicate meaning when written or spoken. If words do not mean something then there is no need to write or say anything, or to listen to someone, or read what they write. But we do read, and we do listen because words communicate meaning.
We use words to write our laws and those laws have meaning. The Constitution of the United States is reputed to be the supreme law of our nation. In fact, the Constitution is what makes us the United States of America.
Before its ratification we were thirteen separate, individual colonies. Ratification and adherence to the Constitution means we are no longer thirteen sovereign governments; we are one united nation founded upon words.
So, words are important because of the very fact that they mean something. Some of those meanings, depending on the context they are used in, are technical, maybe some are medical terms and some are used primarily in a judicial context, but most words have a very practical, common, everyday meaning.
Many commonly accepted meanings of words are being challenged in today’s culture and we are asked to believe words can mean anything one wants them to mean. When a man says he is a woman in a man’s body and we should treat him as a woman, what does that mean?
There are men who claim to be women in men’s bodies and believe they should be given the right to compete in women’s athletic events against women in women’s bodies. Women who are in women’s bodies think women who are in men’s bodies have an unfair advantage in athletic competition.
This is a train wreck headed for a courtroom collision, and there will need to be a ruling as to what it means to be a woman.
The Scriptures teach us, “The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man,” Genesis 2:22. Two human beings created in the image of God, a man and a woman.
The current cultural confusion over what is a woman is probably the reason Senator Marsha Blackburn asked Harvard-educated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during the Senate Judiciary hearings, “Can you provide a definition for the word woman?” And Judge Jackson replied, “Can I provide a definition? No, I can’t.”
Let me see if I can offer a definition of the word woman. A woman is a human adult female who, barring a medical condition that prevents it, can conceive and give birth to another human being making her distinctively different from a man. Of course, I am not a biologist or a federal judge.
All of this leads me to several other questions; What does it mean to be qualified to be a federal judge? What does it mean to be Harvard-educated? What does it mean to be a woman that cannot define what it means to be a woman?
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