Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 09:01:55 -0800

From: Arnold Zwicky zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CSLI.STANFORD.EDU

Subject: Re: Family in the gay sense



there are two entirely different questions here, both of some

interest. one is the question randy roberts just gave citations on

from the tamony materials: how, and when, has the sense of the word

"family" shifted so as to include persons not related to one another

by blood or marriage? one of these shifts involves treating same-sex

domestic partnerships as the functional equivalent of legal or

religious marriages, so lgb people are relevant here. [as i recall,

the entry for "family" shifted notably between the 2nd and 3rd

editions of the AHD, and geoff nunberg wrote an excellent usage

note on just this point.]



but the original question was about the use, primarily among lgb

people, of predicative "family" to refer to sexual orientation, as in

"I took two courses from you before I finally figured out that you

were family" [my recollection of something said to me by a graduate

student, a gay man, some years ago]. this is clearly a metaphorical

extension of the meaning of "family"; the sense of group identity, or

community, among lgb people is analogous to the sense of belonging

in a group with one's parents, siblings, partner, and/or children.



this latter use is *not* extremely recent (just how old it is i cannot

say; i'm pretty sure it was already current in the early 70s, though i

haven't searched through the texts), but it has developed a special

piquancy in recent years by opposition to the explicitly

anti-homosexual stance of the "family values" movement in the u.s.



arnold zwicky, who has families in several senses

(zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ling.ohio-state.edu or zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]csli.stanford.edu)