The Royal Spanish Academy, the official
agency responsible for regulating the Spanish language, has updated
the word “marriage” to include the union of a gay or lesbian
couple.
The Madrid, Spain-based RAE's (Real
Academia Espanola) most famous publication is the Diccionario de
la lengua espanola de la Real Academia Espanola (Dictionary of the
Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy), the DRAE.
In its upcoming 23rd print
edition of the dictionary, the word “marriage” will be updated to
include the following definition: “Under some laws, a union of two
persons of the same sex, contracted by certain rites or legal
formalities to establish and maintain a lifelong union.”
“The RAE does not endorse words, it
records what people use,” said Dario Villanueva, RAE secretary and
coordinator of the commission which produced the DRAE.
Merriam-Webster, the
Massachusetts-based publisher of English language dictionaries, first
included gay unions in its definition of marriage in 2003, a year
before Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage.
Social conservatives in 2009 attempted to pressure
the company to drop the inclusion.