Tag Archives: pride

Love is Love - or is it?

Thoughts on “Love is Love”

Intersectionality/Privilege Disclaimer: I’m a strait white male in a 1st world country who grew up in a minority religion, in poverty, and with a mild medical disability.

“Love is Love”, the Pride slogan, is propaganda of the highest order.

The word “love” in English covers many types and they have important differences that should not be hidden. Often the specific meaning is obvious from the context of a discourse… and that may even apply to the Pride slogan. But, the slogan actually challenges anyone who wants to make a distinction about different kinds of love and is implicitly critical and judgemental of that. Here are examples:

Love between friends, platonic love.

Love between parent and child, familial love.

Love between lovers, passionate love.

Love between newly married couple, romantic love.

Love between long-married couple, patient love.

Love between strangers on a one-night-stand, animal love.

Love between a pet owner and pet, playful or comfort love.

Love between work colleagues, common-cause love.

Love between a person and their work, their food, their travel, their reading, their hobby, pastime, or interests, intellectual love.

Love between a person and their tv show, game, food, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, drugs or other addiction, dysfunctional love.

Love between a person and the cosmos or God, ideal love.

I’m sure there are many more ways that the word “love” is used in real life in English and they are not all the same, we would never advocate that they are all the same, and in many cases they have important legal differences. I hope I don’t need to give examples of some of the twisted things that people do that they call “love”.

The slogan is a very Orwellian thing: it simplifies and twists language for political and power purposes.