365 Gay News » News >> Some years back when I started receiving Associated Press news feeds as editor of an LGBT-focused newspaper [1], I’d regularly receive stories about people named “Gay,” gay old times and happy events and occasionally a certain plane on a secret mission, in addition to my dose of gay news.
These stories would come into my e-mail app because I’d set up the AP system to forward reports containing the words “gay,” as well as “bisexual,” “lesbian” and “transgender.” To make sure I saw international news on our issues, I added “homosexual.”
These days I still get AP news feeds, and I still see stories about people named “Gay” and that World War II bomber. But honestly it’s rare that I come across a story containing “gay” that isn’t either about a gay — homosexual — issue or a person named “Gay.” And even the number of people named “Gay” seems fewer than just a decade ago.
Do we, the LGBT community, now have almost exclusive ownership of this three-letter word?
Do we want exclusive use?
Going back seven years ago to a 2003 Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, I find the first definition for “gay” reads, “adjective, happily excited, keenly alive and exuberant.” The second reads, “bright, lively” and the third states, “of, relating to or used by homosexuals.”
Times have changed.
The first definition of “gay” in my 2010 dictionary reads, “adjective (of a person, esp. a man) homosexual; relating to or used by homosexuals.
The second definition reads, “adjective, lighthearted and carefree; brightly colored; showy; brilliant.”
The third definition is
