from an article in the Independent:
The report ran: "Elton John has become a parent" -- even though the sperm-donor was in fact his partner David Furnish. But the same report also declared that both men had "fathered" the child, when we all know only one did. So: what do the words "parent" and "father" mean any more? Moreover, when we read that the entire affair cost €150,000, does the word "dollar" have the same negotiable meaning as the words "parent" and "father"?
Well, actually no, because the US Treasury has rules about the meaning of dollar: it protects the value of the currency as being vital for the state of the US economy. There is of course no longer anyone who will protect the meaning of words like "father", "mother", "parent", "family" or even "birth certificate". In this new moral order, unlike the world of finance, nothing is quite ever what it says on the tin. A birth certificate is now an ideological declaration, not a documentary fact. Kevin Myers
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