XPost: alt.flame.jesus.christ, talk.atheism   
   From: prabbit1@shamrocksgf.com   
      
   Father Haskell wrote:   
   > Dr. Chris Assaf wrote:   
   >> Hey! Some of these officers have kids and wives. They will be offended   
   >> to hear you say something like that about their husbands.   
   >   
   > Either you're confusing subject and object, or you just said   
   > some of the cops you work with are gay.   
      
   As much as I hate to come to his defense at all, the "They" above can   
   legitimately mean "The wives" as in "...have kids and wives. The wives   
   will be offended..." But also, NOT in his defense, the usage of a   
   pronoun in that sentence was someone confusing and could have been taken   
   as being applied to the subject of the first sentence (since it was the   
   subject of the second) and thus, while not improper english, it was lazy   
   and not as communicative or clear in its meaning as it could have been.   
   Also using "they" to refer to only one part of a pair of nouns "children   
   and wives" was also misleading and not as clear.   
      
      
   --   
   Mike   
      
   -------------------------------   
   "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never   
   stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and   
   neither do we," George W. "Shrub" Bush Aug 5, 2004   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)