That’s So Gay

March 28, 2004

I spoke to my friend Robert today and he told me about a Jewish comedian he saw in New York’s East Village last night who had a strictly politically incorrect act.  Apparently, he began with a joke about how it was okay for blacks to refer to him as a “Crackah” but not a “Cracker”  because the word “Cracker” violated his civil rights.  From there he progressed to how much abuse he took for using the word “gay” as a way to describe things that were goofy or foolish. 

One day it seems a homosexual took issue with his speech.  “I’m really offended that you say gay for things you don’t like.  How would you like it if I said ‘that’s really Jewish’ for things I don’t like?”

The comedian thought about it for a moment.  Then he said, “Man, that would be really gay of you to use Jewish like that.  That’s so G-A-Y.  I’m really disappointed in you.”

It’s a funny tale but there are all too few similar ones to be found in contemporary America.  I went to various different dictionary websites and was unable to find gay defined as “outlandish, goofy, bizarre” or “peculiar” on any of them. 

Therefore, I’ll refer to my and the comedian’s usage as being the seventh, shadow definition of a term no dictionary has the courage to define (seventh due to no source offering more than six).  The seventh interpretation of gay is the way in which many people from my generation once principally used the term.  Today, sadly, more and more of us are gradually being intimidated into not using the word under any circumstances whatsoever.

But I personally object to this capitulation.  I am a conservative and we conservatives must conserve what is essential and valuable to society, and, in my opinion, the shadow usage of gay is something we should not willingly abandon. 

Why is using the word to describe the strange or the suspicious frowned upon?  It’s absolutely perfect and no adjective or noun easily replaces it.  Why should it go the way of the XFL?  There is certainly nothing hateful behind its utilization.  My father nor my mother ever used the term in the fashion I do and they grew up at a time in which gays experienced real discrimination and inequality (as opposed to the present when queer studies majors might rally over realizing that they do not garner the same salary as accounting majors).  To me, it’s not an odious term at any level. 

I refuse to abandon the phrase.  It’s magnificent and a perfect way to depict so many individuals and situations one encounters.  Besides, it’s a question of heritage and pride.  To reject it is to reject my own generation, and, Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder notwithstanding, I’m proud to be a member of Generation X.  These are my brothers and my sisters and we luckily grew up without the excessive sensitivity that so plagues the children of this new millennium and that’s one reason why our futures will be so much brighter. 

When we were bred back in those offensive days of the 1970s, life could be discussed far more realistically and honestly than it can be today.  In those days television didn’t have to be reality based as people experienced truth in their daily lives.  Television didn’t hide unpleasantries and was not always a complete waste of time.  Do you think programs like “WKRP in Cincinnati” or “Three’s Company” would be made today?  Never, their content was too risqué (but complete nudity would not be). 

In the seventies, before cultural Marxism ravaged and neutered our civilization, we could get away with being judgmental and, thus, be ourselves.  Guys like Howard Cosell and  Archie Bunker would never be broadcast anywhere today.  

Those of us who smile when we recall campy videos by The Clash, The B52s, and The Police do not wish to negate the past.  How bad can it be when you can wake up at 6 am and find chicks with feathered hair and purple leg warmers hopping around on your small screen?  No, I’ll stand with my generation.  I won’t sell them out for the kudos of a bunch of PC automatons. 

Furthermore, by saying “that’s so gay” is a shortcut for Generation Xers to recognize and bond with one another.  I recall being on a date in 2000 when the girl stopped me mid-sentence and asked, “Wait a minute.  Did you just say ‘that’s so gay’?”  I nodded.  “I love that.  Nobody says that anymore.  Me and my friends do…in private.” 

Why should we have to retire a phrase like “that’s so gay” from our conversation?  Just because gay activists will hate us?  [Although, interestingly enough, it is never we who hate them.]  Well, look, I understand that no one wants to be a bully and I admit that a large part of gay culture would fall under my rubric of, “man, that is so gay” but I don’t see how heterosexuals are going to make those people happy at any level. 

Look at the way they tried to crucify my fellow Generation Xer, filmmaker Kevin Smith, for the way in which he made jokes and used the word gay in a movie.  Now this fellow is so gay friendly that he practically has “I cry whenever I hear gays are denied a marriage ceremony, expensive flowers, and a reception at Rockefeller Center” tattooed upon his chest, but that’s still not enough for the gay lobby.  They went after him anyway.  I say, why even try to placate these contentophobes?

I will not say that there are not risks at irritating the gay lobby though.  I know from personal experience that the gays have within their ranks some of the most vindictive and vicious of all human beings.  I found this out even though I rarely address homosexuals.  Yet, on the sporadic occasions when I have, the responses were swift and fierce.  They were some of the most vitriolic emails that I’ve ever received.  They’ll call you all sorts of names and even imply that you are one of them.  This is due to their imagining that any who criticize them must be closet homosexuals.  By what reasoning this is true I cannot imagine, but I’ve heard it enough to know that it is their standard operating procedure.  One even told me, after I wrote a favorable review of Ann Coulter’s Treason, that the reason for my admiration of her was due to my wishing to be a beautiful transsexual (sic) like her.  

My eternal rebuttal to this massive criticism is that “it’s all so f------ gay.” 

Honestly though, their antagonism towards the term “gay” is mostly misplaced.  In my case, most of the time I use it I’m not referring to homosexuals at all, but, it does remain quite descriptive of their behaviors.  I used to live in the gay area of Chicago from November of 1998 until March of 2003.  It was strange days indeed.

The area was referred to as Lakeview by heterosexuals, and by the city itself, but the gays dubbed it Boystown.  I found that to many homosexual fantasists, the iron law concerning their kind is that they never do anything odd or abnormal in the least and that they are exactly like everyone else.  This is entirely fallacious. 

The gays are nothing like everyone else from what I experienced.  I once observed a gay guy getting thrown out of a 7-11.  He yelled back at the Indian clerk, “This is just because I’m gay!”  But the reason he was thrown out was due to his not wearing a shirt.  Perhaps because he was gay he thought he deserved special treatment from the oppression of cotton, but the sign clearly said that customers had to wear shirts. 

I knew several gays from my gym and one of them informed me of a bar he frequently visited known as The Cellblock.  It had an unlit room in the back where everybody had freeform sex provided they wore an article of leather.   I thought, you can only get in if you wear leather?  Now that’s really gay.  

What other word could describe what I saw the morning of the 2002 Gay Pride Parade when, as I reclined at the leg press of the Ashland Avenue Powerhouse Gym, I viewed a guy cruise by wearing only a cowboy hat, a Speedo, and combat boots.  Isn’t “gay” the nicest form of addressing such tomfoolery?  Why ask why you get made fun of when your pride consists of wearing a Speedo in public?  You should get made fun of and as often as possible.  For those of our readers who live nowhere near the gay enclaves, surf the net and examine some of their slang and lingo for yourselves to decide if they really are just like you.  My bet is that, like me, you’ll conclude they’re a unique bunch. 

Hey, I’ll report, you decide, but, as for me, I’ll keep describing the whimsical and bizarre with the term “gay.”  I merely ask that you consider joining me.  Here is yet another opportunity to fight a battle in the war against political correctness.  Let’s fight them on the beaches, on the fields, on the streets, and in the haciendas, boutiques, salons and hide- outs of all things wacky.  Join me brothers and sisters, the only thing you have to lose are your professorial acquaintances and non-judgmental friends.  And isn’t their loss a good in itself?

Bernard Chapin