Gay Marriage

Andrew Sullivan illustrates his latest post with this photo:

liza-gay-marriage

It’s a amusing question made unintentionally more clever by omission of an apostrophe.

FILED UNDER: Gender Issues, Humor, ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Franklin says:

    I’m a bit slow on the uptake, can somebody explain why it’s more clever without the apostrophe?

  2. kth says:

    Franklin, probably because ‘cant’ without the apostrophe is a synonym for dogma, unexamined belief, shibboleth. I’m not sure exactly how the unintended pun is supposed to work, though.

    Canting has the same word origin as chanting, the main chant leader in a synagogue is the cantor, etc; probably the pejorative meaning of cant refers to uttering religious liturgy musically and uncritically. I once saw a bumper sticker that read “Heralds don’t sing, they cant”. Great play on can’t/cant, but probably not gotten by even 1 in 100 of the motorists that saw it (I LOL’d, but mainly at the thought of putting such an obscure joke on the bumper of your car).

  3. Of course, wanting to be more like Liza Minelli may not be selling point the sign holder imagines it to be.

  4. McGehee says:

    I find the question amusing too, but almost certainly not for the reason Sully does.

  5. Franklin says:

    Franklin, probably because ‘cant’ without the apostrophe is a synonym for dogma, unexamined belief, shibboleth.

    Ahhh, the online dictionary I used didn’t seem to have that definition, or I missed it. I think I see how James is applying it now.

  6. An Interested Party says:

    Of course, wanting to be more like Liza Minelli [sic] may not be selling point the sign holder imagines it to be.

    Of course, that is a distortion…the point is that the sign holder would like to have the same marriage rights as Miss Minnelli…

  7. floyd says:

    When a nation embraces perversion, it doesn’t normalize the perversion , It perverts the nation.

  8. floyd says:

    This calls for an apt alliteration…
    Kant can’t cant.

  9. McGehee says:

    the point is that the sign holder would like to have the same marriage rights as Miss Minnelli…

    You didn’t get the joke either.

    Miss Minnelli, a woman, married a man.