From a technological perspective I am a child of my times: I like gadgets, computers, digital imaging, the Internet (I’m not sure how I coped so long without it) and I may even learn to like the iPad when it starts multi-tasking.
When it comes to language, though, I am more at home with the prose of Trollope than Twitter. So encountering a post-English atrocity like LGBTQQIP, presents the unpalatable temptation to do the opposite of what I occasionally succumbed to in a more colourful if muddled era: turn-off and tune-out.
One can’t dignify “LGBTQQIP” with the attribute of meaning, but it apparently begs to be applied to a person who is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Pansexual. I remain unclear as to whether one must be suffering all these afflictions simultaneously in order to lay claim to the acronym, but I suspect no-one is counting.
Were I allowed the speak at the forthcoming Anglican General Synod in Halifax – where I will be a blogging visitor – it is a question I would bring up for deliberation in euphoric anticipation that someone would take me seriously.
It’s been said that corruption of ideas and beliefs is always preceded by corruption of language (or something – Bill Muehlenberg?). “Homophobia” is a case in point – an intentional distortion of the meaning of language (=”fear of likeness”) for purely ideological reasons – it has a chilling Orwellian ring.