Being a writer, I take a special interest in language. I love words, so I hate to see perfectly good ones lost through neglect. And I really hate to see them banned outright — especially when they're words that describe the most important things in life.

Which brings me to Oakland, Calif., where terms like marriage, family values and natural family have been officially declared "hate speech" — and city workers have been told that sort of talk will get them fired.

The story's just starting to get some attention because it's part of a lawsuit that's worked its way through the system and may be in the U.S. Supreme Court soon. But it all actually started years ago.

In 2002, some homosexual Oakland employees formed a group and began promoting their activities through the city e-mail system — including sending out a "Happy Coming Out Day" message urging their colleagues to join in National Coming Out Day. Several employees asked superiors if this was really legit city business; a City Council member named Danny Wan sent a reply telling them that "celebration of the gay/lesbian culture and movement" was just a part of the city's commitment to "celebrate diversity."

Not everyone felt like celebrating. So a couple of African American Christian women who figured "diversity" ought to include them too, Regina Rederford and Robin Christy, formed a group of their own, the Good News Employee Association (GNEA). They put up a flier advertising their group as "a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day," operating "with respect for the natural family, marriage and family values." They said they opposed efforts "to redefine the natural family and marriage," and noted that California law acknowledged marriage as "the union of a man and a woman."

And then they got in trouble.

A lesbian co-worker complained to the city that the flier made her feel "targeted" and "excluded." A supervisor quickly pulled it down for violating city rules against "discrimination," and announced that the women could only advertise their group's existence if it removed "verbiage that could be offensive to gay people" — like marriage, natural family, family values and union of a man and a woman.

Then came the threat. An Oakland official, Deputy Executive Director Joyce Hicks, sent out a memo to city employees citing "fliers ... in public view which contained statements of a homophobic nature" which "were determined to promote sexual orientation-based harassment." This, Hicks warned, could bring punishments "up to and including termination."

The GNEA ladies didn't get intimidated. Instead, they got attorneys. Aided by a sympathetic group, the Pro-Family Law Center, they turned up a bunch of evidence that their views had been singled out to be silenced. But judges sided with the city: A U.S. District Court for Northern California said marriage and family values had "anti-homosexual import." The next court up from there, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the city was merely pursuing its "legitimate administrative interests."

That may not be the last word for the GNEA ladies. The judges they drew have a rep for taking the "progressive" side on issues, regardless of law. (The 9th Circuit — best known for its short-lived decision banning the Pledge of Allegiance — gets overturned more than any other federal court.) Now the Supreme Court is deciding whether to take the case, and they could easily decide that Oakland has violated some free-speech rights.

Whatever happens in the courts, this battle is less about law than language — and how some people are trying to seize control of it.

"The flier supposedly violated the city regulation prohibiting 'discrimination and/or harassment based on sexual orientation,'" writes columnist George Will. But that's hardly very convincing, he points out.

The only cited disruption was one lesbian's complaint that the flier made her feel "targeted" and "excluded." So anyone has the power to be a censor just by saying someone's speech has hurt his or her feelings.

Unless the speech is "progressive." If the GNEA claimed it felt "excluded" by advocacy of the gay rights agenda, would that advocacy have been suppressed? Of course not — although the GNEA's members could plausibly argue that the city's speech police have created a "hostile" environment against them.

It's all pretty radical. Because, ultimately, what we're being told is that only one side of the debate can talk. At all.

That might sounds like an exaggeration. But think about it. The GNEA women didn't use any slurs against those practicing homosexual behavior, or anyone else. In fact, as attorney Scott Lively (who represents one of them) notes, the flier talks not so much about what they're against as about what they're for: "It's a completely affirmative and positive statement about a Christian value system centered on the natural family."

And in that word natural is the essence of the Christian position right there. It's all about the nature God gave us. He made men and women to bond with each other in ways that two males or two females could never do. He tells us about it in His Word, from Genesis — where He speaks of creating us male and female (1:27) — to Romans, where He describes rebellious humanity "exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones" (1:26).

Understandably, gays don't want to hear this. But they can hardly deny Christians the right to say it without denying Christians the right to argue their position at all.

And that, I think, really is the whole idea.

Some gays have strained to make Scripture read their way — imagining it favorably depicting David (of all people) in a homosexual relationship with Jonathan, for example. They've even attempted to explain away Romans' language about unnatural homosexual relations by saying it's only denouncing (follow this now) homosexual conduct by people who weren't true homosexuals: For those who were born gay, they say, it's A-OK.

But those attempts pretty clearly fall flat. As ex-gay author Joe Dallas notes in The Gay Gospel? How Pro-Gay Advocates Misread the Bible, Scripture's verses on homosexuality list it among other widely recognized sins, like adultery, deceit or fraud — "things inarguably wrong, their wrongness requiring no explanation." And Paul's gender-specific language leaves no wiggle room. "There is nothing in his wording to imply he even recognizes such a thing as a 'true' homosexual versus a 'false' one," Dallas writes. "He simply describes homosexual behavior as unnatural, no matter who it is committed by."

So gays who don't like what Christianity has to say about homosexuality can't get too far as long as the Bible has any credibility. They pretty much need to discredit it, or at least to rule it an illegitimate topic for public debate — a mere "private" preference, and nothing that has anything to say to anyone who doesn't choose to accept it.

Most Christians can see the folly of letting a government body enforce that position. But there is a danger that some of us will adopt the same rule voluntarily — shying away from talking about God's design to anyone who doesn't want to hear it. We tell ourselves that for us to truly minister to others, we should avoid offending them: Just be "loving," and maybe some day they'll come around.

But that's not doing anyone any favors. We should be loving, of course; we should weigh our words and deeds carefully, and we shouldn't get in people's faces unnecessarily. But being loving means speaking the truth, even — no, especially — when the world doesn't want to hear it.

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If you're struggling with same-sex attraction, please visit either Exodus International or National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality.