Not for nothing did people fight wars over the definition of words. After all, homoiousios and homoousios are only one letter off from each other…but blood was spilled and an Empire was rocked to its core over it. Because homoiousios means that Jesus was like God while homoousios means Jesus is God. It is crucial, though the modern mind has a hard time understanding why. Had homoiousios triumphed then the West, the world you know, would have been exceptionally different. Almost certainly something like the Muslim world…Jesus eventually demoted to mere prophet with some later person able to change the message because, well, just one more prophet, right? But we were saved from that by the Council of Nicaea which defined the term for the whole Christian world. At that point, those holding to homoiousios were ultimately doomed because the gatekeeper was the Church and the correct term had been defined in Council.

You can, if you like, get into interminable arguments about whether that would have been a good or bad thing. As a believing Catholic, I say it would have been bad. It would have led to a world without salvation…a static, dead world with no real hope. The great achievements of Europe would never have surpassed the old Greco-Roman world. But that argument need not detain us here – what is important to take away is that words matter and who controls the words, wins.

This came into my mind when I saw yesterday a story both sad and absurd about a teenager being taken by his mother to another State for transition medicine after his State banned it for minors. We’ve all seen these stories – all designed to get us hating the people banning medical transition for minors, but that ain’t working – but for the millionth time I saw, “gender-affirming care”. That’s when it hit me: they are controlling the words and so framing the debate and essentially forcing us to battle on their ground. We can’t win as long as phrases like “gender-affirming care” are permitted. The heretics are now the gatekeepers.

And that isn’t the only thing; it is just what struck me at the moment. This is not a debate about the merits of transitioning. But it is a warning that if we don’t get control of the language, we can’t win. No matter what battles we might win at the State or federal level, as long as the heretics get to define what it is we’re doing, they’ll win. That is why, when I saw it, I pointed out that we need to change the term to the biologically correct wording: gender appearance modification. Because that is what they’re doing. They can’t change a person’s gender: all they can do is modify how a person looks. Sometimes quite remarkably, but that doesn’t change the underlying biological facts. By letting them get away with saying “gender-affirming care” we are essentially conceding their argument: that gender is a social construct and that if a person says they are a different gender then so they are.

I really don’t want us to get hung up on the one issue here – so, let’s also point out that “abortion is healthcare” is another heretical phrase being used to destroy the orthodox and correct, “kill an unborn child”. Do we really want to win the Life debate? Then we have to start being enforcers of orthodoxy: every time they say anything other than “kill an unborn child”, we say it…and where we can, we enshrine it into law: that is, we force official terminology to conform to our views. So, where a publicly funded hospital these days might say they performed 1,257 pregnancy terminations last year, we’ll force them to officially record 1,257 unborn children were killed last year. Heck, just the fun in forcing the Left to argue that kids weren’t killed is worth it: remember, the more people actually see what the Left wants, the less popular it becomes. But outside of that, it is the truth – and the most important thing for any human to do is adhere to truth. Haltingly, failing a lot of times, still each person must strive to be as truthful as they can at all times. The Truth does set you free – mostly because it allows you to live rationally.

What I’m asking is for you to all put on your Inquisitor hat. This will be a tough pill for you Protestants out there to swallow – but to be a bit brutal about it, the reason we have “medical aid in dying” up in Canada (rather than calling it by its proper name: murdering people for budgetary reasons) is because way back when Martin Luther said that people can deny the definitions settled by a Church Council. This is not me being mean: this is me just pointing out that when you start to allow private judgement to trump all, the heresies unleashed won’t just stop at denying the supremacy of the Pope. So, anyways: remain Protestant all you want, but channel your inner Torquemada all the same. In all things, look for the phrasing which is being used to deny obvious truth…and then call it out.

Because we must get control of the words – to force the Left to explain itself in our terms; the true terms. Let them go before the American people and be forced to say what they really want. And then let the chips fall where they may. I have a strong suspicion they’ll fall our way.