What does "Human Rights" mean to you?

For generations, the under-developed nations were collectively labeled "The Third World." Those nations considered the quoted name even more denigratory than "under-developed." It took generations for the UN-led world to begin using the current "Global South" as the new identifying tag for that group of nations which for whatever reasons lag behind economically or culturally or both.

For centuries, "gay" was primarily defined as "joyous and lively, merry." Its fourth and last definition was "a male homosexual." Its current use as a shortcut to refer to the entire lgbt community is perhaps two generations-old.  Pretty speedy. Faster yet has been the development that "human rights," especially when capitalized as in "Human Rights Campaign," is coming to mean "lgbt." In less than one generation, one must now provide a clear context  -- such as United Nations activity -- to prevent "human rights" from being misunderstood, and I suspect that most writers will avoid using the phrase in other than discussions about gender.

Such changes have long been frequent. My Compact Oxford English Dictionary suggests that "lady" originally meant the opposite of what it means today.

Frank Versagi is the editor of Versagi Voice.