(October 8, 2012 at 1:42 pm)Stimbo Wrote:(October 8, 2012 at 1:32 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Before the word gay was popular to slur homosexuals it merely ment "happy". So if words can change and they do I don't think gays should get bent out of shape if someone says "that is so gay".
Indeed, since at least the late 14th century (CE). Also "excellent person, noble lady, gallant knight," in Middle English. Interestingly, it also had connotations of "wanton, lewd, lascivious"; hence the now-extinct 19th century "gay-house" for brothel. Apparently the modern sense of the word, dating back to at least the 1920s and probably even fifty years earlier, "likely got a boost from the term gay cat, used as far back as 1893 in American English for "young hobo," one who is new on the road, also one who sometimes does jobs."
I frickin' love language.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gay
There have been individuals and groups of atheists who avoid the word because it is and has been used by the religious as slur. Some people call themselves humanists or freethinkers or brights. But the truth is that if you don't believe in a god, you are an atheist. Siince I don't view that word as a slur even if others do, why would I allow them to define me?
FUCK THEM is the way I look at it. Just like the word "nigger" can be both a bigoted slur and "you're my homie".
I get down on anyone putting way too much value into the fallacy that words have magical powers. I am most certainly against bigotry, but taboos and blanket statments of "never" as a solution don't work.
Time place and context matter. A bigoted skinhead with a Nazi symbol tatoo, yea, that's obvious. But if Mel Brooks can dipict Nazis and poke fun of them in his movies and Dave Sapel can use the word "nigger" in his skits, then I am not going to shy away from poking fun of assholes who slur atheists by saying "I am an atheist kitten barbecuer".
AND I certainly wouldn want anyone objecting to Huckleberry Finn or the Holocaust Museum out of some stupid sense of political correctness.
It still always will amount to time place and context.
