March 25, 2014.
A letter to the New York Times on the recent article decline of the use of the word “homosexual”…
The self righteous arrogance of these “experts” on who has a right to use what term is shameful for you to accept with no comment.
You and these people destroy their own words when they admit that the point is to remove sex from terms. How religious can you get? Are these people ashamed of their sexuality?
In the 1950s, we used the word “homophile” not because we didn’t like the honest word “homosexual” but because it included non-homosexuals who were not bigots and supported our efforts. We used the word “gay” as an adjective, such as “gay bars.”
You might be writing another article a few years from now saying that the PC Police say only “queer” or some other term is now acceptable. Sadly, you are always following experts who are not.
(I am a co-founder of the Homosexual Information Center, which came out of ONE, Inc., which came out of the original Mattachine Foundation in Los Angeles. Your “experts” might want to learn history.)
[end of letter]
Why are the “gays” so unsure of themselves that they can not just say that they prefer the term gay but instead have to make it a crime to use another word such as homosexual.
And why would the paper of record publish an article and only give one view and use biased “experts,” and distort history. For instance some of us who were there in Chicago at the NACHO conference in 1968 (referred to in the article) were not “eager” to support Frank’s idea of Gay is Good, since it was an obvious copy of Black is Beautiful.
Politicians have proved that changing a term to make it sound better or hide the truth works. And last night on HBO’s Real Time, Bill Maher talked about this and gave a wonderful example. He said, since we know Republicans don’t like giving food to the poor, why don’t the Democrats change the term from food stamps to “Jesus coupons?”
Is this the type game we have to play to educate people?
