Darkside Rainbow

…did the world of gay news just have a miniature explosion while I was asleep or something? First we’ve got California approving legislation for gay marriage and Arnie being a douche about vetoing it, then Bush nominating a man with an anti-gay record for surgeon general (does this surprise anyone at all?), and not to mention Kalamazoo, MI stripping away same-sex partner benefits (I was supposed to speak at an animation convention there last month; I’m glad I didn’t, now). Is it just me, or did the gay community take a few hits below the belt in the past few days? Then again, it does seem to go that way rather often. A few steps forward, a few punches recoiling back. But this is the story that really catches my attention today:

Teacher Suspended For Comparing Gay Slur With The N Word - 365gay.com

 
(Nashville, Tennessee) A Nashville middle school teacher who equated calling something “gay” with the use of the N word has been suspended for three days without pay.

Stephen Henry, a sixth-grade teacher at Creswell Arts Magnet School, overheard a student describe something as “gay.” Henry approached the girl who is reportedly African American and asked her how she would feel if he were to use the N word.

The girl later complained to her parents.

This is a teacher with twenty-one years of positive history; a teacher who used an apt example to make a student understand the kind of damage her words can cause. He didn’t call her the N-word. He asked her how she would feel if she was called the N-word, so she would understand how people would feel about the use of “gay” in a negative connotation. I know the N word is racially charged and sensitive. But what it comes down to is that it’s a word that’s used to label people negatively because of a trait they’re born with: skin color. “Gay” is a word that’s used to describe people because of another trait they’re born with: homosexuality. It’s not as charged as the N word. But it could be, given time and constant use in that fashion.

I don’t think the teacher deserved a suspension at all. I think he deserves a commendation for making his point so clearly, and I hope that his intention is considered and appreciated more thoroughly when his suspension is appealed.

The girl’s mother said she was too young for that kind of discussion. If she’s old enough to be calling things “gay” in a derogatory fashion then she’s old enough to understand the connotations of her words, and young enough to change her habits before they become an ingrained and rather ugly part of her personality.

And before you get started on me about how I’ve never been called the N word so I wouldn’t understand: button it. Feel like playing the Adri’s Mystery Ethnicity game today? One of the many pieces that make up this particular pile of sweet brown sugar is good old African-American, darlin’, and where I come from one drop is all that it takes for you to be considered full-blood. So yes, I’ve been called the N word. I’ve been called the N word, redskin, tomahawk, Squanto, chink, bonzai, and a half-dozen other racial slurs based on one or another aspect of my mixed ethnicity. And that’s before the barbs begin about my sexuality, my style, my hobbies and habits.

So don’t you effin’ well tell me I wouldn’t understand why it’s so serious that he used that word as an example. And don’t tell me that the N word and a phrase like “that’s so gay” cannot be compared in severity, either, because you know what? The N word started off as a common, innocuous part of everyday language, too. Negro: the Spanish word for the color black, nothing else. As harmless as the colors red, blue, and yellow. It wasn’t until it was applied in a derogatory, dehumanizing fashion to an entire ethnic group that it began to take on the connotations that its slang/slur form, the N word, has today. It wasn’t until we made it ugly that it became filth. It isn’t the word itself. It’s the decades of intention that were poured into it.

So how long, do you think, will it take for “gay” to pick up that same connotation? How many times will we say “that’s so gay” about something we find disgusting or inadequate before the meaning of the word “gay” changes and it becomes as much of a sensitive, painful issue as the N word?

Language evolves by the means and methods in which we use it. Words mean what we wish them to mean. Words reflect our intentions.

So when you call something “gay”…tell me, what are you intending to say?

gay marriage, california, arnold schwarzenegger, george bush, surgeon general, anti-gay, james holsinger, kalamazoo, michigan, same-sex partner benefits, healthcare, the n word, gay, racism, homophobia, slurs, slang