GAY

From Philosopedia.org

The Stonewall Inn, site in Greenwich Village of the June 1969 riots by gays

GAY

* “When anyone asks if I’m gay,” said Arthur C. Clarke on New Year’s Eve in 1997, “I answer, ‘No, just slightly cheerful.’ ”

In the 14th century, to be “gay” was to be “merry.” In the 18th and in 19th centuries, the word was a euphemism for those who were sexually available or living an immoral life—invariably, it was applied to prostitutes. Later in the 19th, gay was used by some in Europe to connote “inversion,” or love of the same sex.

Michael Pollak, in The New York Times (5 Feb 2006), wrote that "gay" meaning homosexual

• is probably a derivation from the British "geycat" or "gaycat," prison slang for a homosexual boy, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, which cites a 1935 use. Other sources give the meaning of "gay-cat" as a young tramp or hobo in the company of an older one.

"Gay" mave been used by homosexuals as early as the 1860's but certainly by the 1920's. In various 20th century countercultures as well as in the Armed Forces in the 1940s, it became an innocent-sounding term used by homosexuals among themselves. A recorded reference to "gay bar" is listed in The Historical Dictionary of American Slang. The theatrical milieu used the word widely in the mid 1960s and when homosexuals in the late 1960s began to assert themselves openly, “gay” supplanted the various alternative words and was expressed without any discriminatory overtones. In the 1990s, a number of gays started using the derisive term “queer” to describe themselves as well as to taunt homophobes.

Gay and lesbian criticism is one of the most recent of the critical and theoretical discourses to emerge from the “liberation” movements (New Left, anti-Vietnam War, counter-culture, black, and feminist) of the 1960s and early 1970s, notes Richard Dellamora of Trent University. His discussion and that of San Diego State University’s Bonnie Zimmerman concerning gay theory and criticism is found in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism (1994). “As the 1990s progress,” Zimmerman observes, “we find particularly rich and fruitful debates ongoing among lesbian critics and theorists over the nature of self, community, gender, and sexuality.”

Many gays and lesbians, uncomfortable with what they perceive to be their church’s homophobia, have left the various organized religions or started their own “religious fellowships.” For example, there are Axios Eastern and Orthodox Christians; the Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, which is a member of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations; Dignity (Catholics); Integrity (Episcopalians); and the Metropolitan Community Church (various Christian denominations). The Metropolitan Community Church was founded in 1968 by the Rev. Troy D. Perry, a Pentecostal minister who lost his church after acknowledging that he was gay. Los Angeles-based, it has an estimated 42,000 members in the United States and abroad. The largest gay church, the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, had over 1,400 congregants at the end of the 20th century.

Qwer Quarterly, North America’s Lesbian and Gay Secular Humanist Newsletter, appeared briefly in 1993, then ceased publication. Its editor was Richard Seymour and included among its contributing editors were leading secular humanists such as Bonnie and Vern Bullough, Gerald Larue, and Rob Tielman. The Council for Secular Humanism, which publishes Free Inquiry, specifically affirms as one of its statement of principles, “We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.”

The Council for Secular Humanism promotes the Gay and Lesbian Humanist (PTT, 34 Spring Lane, Kenilworth, Warwickshire CV8 2HB, United Kingdom), which has been published quarterly in London by the Pink Triangle Trust since 1981. George Broadhead was its editor. Gay and Lesbian Humanist was a British journal until 2005, when a change in editorial policy led to its change to Gay Humanist Quarterly.

{Arthur C. Clarke to WAS, 4 Jan 1998}