This is a gay post

Its time I did society a big favor and officially declared “gay” a safe, non-political, non-sexually charged noun.

A year or so back, a friend of mine noticed that I had started a theme in my Facebook statuses wherein I constantly referred to certain events or situations as gay. Eg: “Pakistan losing the test series is gay”, “Having to visit relatives is gay”. I figured it was funny and people would realize I was just being intentionally ridiculous (“Shrimps and shellfish in general are gay”).

Well my friend didn’t think so. He was pretty offended by my use of the word “gay” and went on about how I was perpetuating a negative and degrading attitude towards homosexuals by my use of “gay” as an insult.

Now I don’t feel very strongly about too many things in life which, I feel, justifies how stubbornly unwavering I can be when I feel I have a real point. And my point is this: “gay” is completely harmless and, actually, a pretty neat word to use.

I have nothing against homosexuals. When I use “gay” in my speech, I’m not using it because I view gays negatively or associate unpleasantness with them. It’s just a really fun word to use; note how it roles off the tongue much easier than “lame” or “jerk” in my opinion. In fact, I’m almost sure that a lot of people who use “gay” when referring to something which displeases them don’t hold a deep resentment towards homosexuals. “Gay” has just become common parlance now. It comes so naturally in a sentence that I don’t even notice its occurrence – sort of on par with “like” and “y’know”.

And homosexuals need to chill out and stop being so self righteous about this. Yeah it sucks that a word which defines who you are is also being used by some people to refer to things they hate but hey, don’t take it personally. We can’t just remove words from our vocabulary because sects of society consider them slurs. What’s next? If nymphomania starts becoming recognized as a legitimate life choice, are we going to have to stop using “fucker”? Try telling my dad to stop using "bastard" if having children outside wedlock becomes a socially accepted norm - he freakin' loves that word.

I know part and parcel of the advancement of society is the tolerance and encouragement of elements in the past which were suppressed or considered taboo. That's progress I guess and I'm fine with that. But why should it have to come at the price of a great word? You cant tell me that the only thing keeping society from accepting homosexuals is the constant use of "gay" as an insult/adjective.

So from here on in, “gay” in its many myriad forms is totally acceptable.