Quote:
No, sorry, our parents are not 'gay', your math teacher is not 'gay' your cell phone is not 'gay' Elton John is Gay, open a dictionary!
*chuckles bitterly* You're witnessing the evolution of a language. Gays did this to the word 'gay' before homophobes did.
Confused? Let me explain.
Personally, I think what's happened to the word 'gay' is a good reason to
NOT try and co-opt words.
Before the middle/latter half of the 20th century, the word "gay" appeared in the dictionary as
“carefree”,
“happy”, or
“bright and showy." It was once
very common in speech and literature and used in that context.
I mean, think back to the Flinstones (Their theme song; "We'll have a gay old time!"), or World War II.
The homosexual community
co-opted the word 'gay' to mean someone who is homosexual starting around the 1920's--you can see the transformation of its usage there, and ever increasing as the decades go by.
This was a
concious act, not something that just happened. A satirical British newspaper, the Private Eye, used to mock the whole "transform the word gay to mean homosexual" movement with a comic called "The Sads."
So then the homosexual community successfully eclipsed the original meaning of the word. Most people probably don't even know that 'gay' meant something else other than 'homosexual' in the past (although dictionaries still list that definition ... it might as well be archaic).
But then the word started to change again at the hands of the other parts of society.
Since no one remembered what 'gay' meant, only knowing it now was a label for homosexuality, homophobes began using it however they could in negative contexts. The same goes with the other two well-known homosexual-referencing insults.
As a person who gets irate over the concious changing of meanings behind icons and words (
for example, France and much of Europe now views Celtic and Norse symbology as being Neo-Nazi symbols because of their widespread usage of such symbols), this kind of thing just makes me shake my head bitterly.
So too do I get angry with a certain other group who's trying to do the same thing gays did--an atheist secular humanist faction trying to change the meaning of the word "bright" to mean "atheist."
I refuse to call them by the name they've awarded themselves, for that only helps them achieve their goals--but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what they've named themselves based on what I just said.
Think about how venomously elitist that particular movement is for a moment. Re-engineering words that have dictionary definitions meaning "intelligent" or "mentally superior" to also mean "atheist." It's a subtle form of atheist zealotry, trying to assert their supposed intellectual superiority over religious (or as that movement refers to the rest of us, "delusional superstitionists") people.
Aside from the sheer arrogance coming from a movement like that, if what happened to the word 'gay' shows anything, then eventually people may start using the word "bright" in negative connotations, thus transforming the word from a harmless adjective to both an elitist one and an insult. Atheists will probably lose the most, over the actions of a few elitists.
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. I have no problem with homosexuality, it's fine with me. If two men or towo woman love each other, and possibly wnat to get married, so be it, not my problem, they can choose how to live. Just because your religious veiws say taht homosexuality is bad doesn't mean other's do. You take your path, they'll take there's, it's not your decision how they choose to live their lives.
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I really hope the rest of America Isent this dumb...
