Please tell me this isn't going to become a trend...

[Raxoremys]

I wanted to put this on one of the existing threads, but I wasn't sure if it would really fit. I didn't want to start a whole new thread just for this, but it worries me enough that I feel something should be said about it.

Recently I've come across quite a few people using the word "gay" as a negative term. The people I heard it from seemed to otherwise act very maturely in the general scheme of FH, so this confused me. On every occasion where I heard someone say it, more or less immediately they were asked not to use it in that context by several other people. And on every occasion(yes, it was definitely different people each time, not just one goofy floof) the person laughed it off and asked how we could possibly find it offensive. The most recent one said "Hahaha ok, 'homosexual' then XD"
It confuses me to no end that anyone in this day and age, and certainly anyone who plays games like FH, could find it ok to do this and laugh about it. If some particularly impressionable younger player were to hear them doing it, they could very easily think "Oh that older person is doing it, so it must be ok."

I don't know, really. I might just be overreacting to an immature kid having a joke, but these people genuinely seemed not to understand what they were doing wrong by using the word "gay" as a derogatory term. Myself having many gay friends, and being very proud that my country has recently legalised marriage equality at last(New Zealand frick yeah!), it just seems like such a massive step backward that there are still people who think this way.
Thoughts?

[Cecilia~]

My sister is lesbian and she calls things "gay" jokingly all the time.

[Warrior4ever]

I've seen many people on and off game use the term negatively or jokingly myself. When this happens you could tell them to stop, sure. Or you could tell them what the term actually means. Other than meaning that one individual is attracted to others of the same sex, it can also mean 'happy', and I believe it's used as such in several christmas carols as well. Think about that, like if someone were to say something like; "Oh that's gay," there's nothing bad about that, it could very well mean "Oh that's happy"! Sadly, some people just use words without really knowing the meaning, and probably won't work to correct their knowledge until they've matured enough to do so.

[GhostingHowl]

I am sure that most people, when calling something 'gay' do not actually dislike homosexual people or think they are bad. At the very least, I doubt that is why they are using the term gay in that fashion. Languages are very active things. They usually do not stay set in stone, they continue to change and evolve as people use them.

For example, many negative words have transcended their original meaning to become their own entities.
Take the word 'dumb' for instance. Originally, dumb was used to describe mute/deaf people. You can see how this would turn to become a negative term to use toward people. However, nowadays most folks dont even realize the origin of 'dumb' nor does anyone wish to make fun of mute/deaf persons when using it.

I believe that the word gay could be undergoing this transition. Who knows, maybe someday no one will know the origin of the word at all.