Hubris: how gay!
In a perhaps unguarded moment during a light-hearted radio interview, New Zealand's prime minister John Key referred to a presenter wearing a gay red top
. This outraged some who construed it as a slur against the homosexual community. Key later defended himself, stating that he used the word gay
to mean weird
rather than as a deliberate offence; the Oxford English Dictionary notes its use in this manner to mean foolish, stupid, or unimpressive
.
Nevertheless, his quip has sent the politically-correct over-reactors all a'dither. Sir Ian McKellen has entered the fray, and writes:
I'm currently touring secondary schools in UK, attacking homophobia in the playground and discouraging kids from the careless use of “gay” which might make their gay friends (and teachers) feel less about themselves… Careless talk damages lives.
Sir Ian needs to get over himself, at risk of being a sanctimonious hypocrite. Or is he so self-obsessed that he cares nothing for those who wish to be gay
in a light-hearted and carefree
, or brightly coloured and showy manner
?
Wasn't it the homosexual community that repurposed a pre-existing word, with its own long-accepted usage, for themselves? They can hardly complain when that same word then gets re-repurposed by others, it's not as if they own it, or showed any respect for its existing use beforehand. They're nothing better than linguistic squatters.
If they used homosexual
to refer to their sexual orientation, then they could be justly offended at its misuse, but otherwise their whining is just gay. And I mean that in the foolish, stupid, or unimpressive
sense!