Admiring Michelangelo's David doesn't make you gay

It does if you stare at the penis for an excessive length of time.

OR rather- as I'd originally read it-that only gays are supposed to have an eye for that

Dude, as much as I appreciate your like FIGHTING APPARENT HOMOPHOBIC COMMENTS, saying 'gays' is just as bad. It's no different than saying 'blacks' to describe a group of people.

It's gay people/gay guy etc, not gays. Gay isn't a noun, it's an adjective. You can't be A GAY and the multiple certainly isn't 'gays'.

Faust you are the first person I've seen say anything about "gays".  Maybe it depends on how you say it (THE GAYS) but I have never seen anyone complain about it before, and that includes THE GAYS.

Maybe that's because most people don't complain about shit for fear of being a TROUBLEMAKER or whatever, or PUSHING THEIR LUCK in society.

I find 'gays' incredibly offensive really, even though the majority of the time it's said is in a well-meaning way.

Many sitcoms I've seen reference the idea that referring to gay people as 'a gay' or 'gays' is ridiculous, even back in the 90s with like LARRY SANDERS and shit - (Hank Kingsley: "He's a gay!" Larry Sanders: "What are you, Italian or something? 'he'sa gay!'"). It's not a new idea that referring to a group of people by an adjective alone is shitty. Hey look at all the fats, all the blacks, all the shorts, all the disabled (another phrase people use that, if you attend sensitivity training, you're told that it's offensive).

I totally understand that it MIGHT seem like nitpicking to someone outside of the specific group the term is applied to, or indeed many gay people who probably don't give a shit either way, but using the word in that way is not only offensive on a personal level, but also grammatically unsound. Hey, look at that big. I have to get me one of those tasty.

I've had a few conversations about this recently, a lot of the time about using the adjective 'gay' to describe things in place of the word 'shitty' or 'rubbish'. I'm less harsh on that merely because it's mostly children who do this and it'd be fighting an unwinnable war against the immature psyche and world of humour. However, I do still find this less offensive (gay as in another word for shitty) than the term 'gays' or 'a gay', mostly due to the fact that it removes the noun from the sentence, thereby removing the PERSON/PEOPLE the comment itself is about.

I'm gay, I'm not A gay. I'm short, I'm not A short. I'm white, I'm not A white. I'm British, I'm not A British. I'm pretty damn sexy, I'm not A sexy. I'm a British citizen, a short man, a sexy mother fucker, and Paolo has just told me I'm a douchebag, but those all end in nouns because they're actual things rather than qualities of a thing.

I felt kind of funny about the words being used that way until I saw the phrase  "gays and lesbians" appear in places like the Washington Blade, by which point i shrugged it off.

I see it misused constantly, often by gay people themselves. Louis Spence, a motherfucking, Uncle Tom, seventies throwback wished Sky TV viewers a 'Merry Christmas to all you men, women, and gays!' It still doesn't make it any less ignorant, and pricks like that do a fuckload to play up to the gay stereotypes that really hurt people like me. Mother fucker.

Lesbian IS a noun however, and always has been. A gay woman is a lesbian. They aren't a gay though, as no one is a gay. Unless they're so gay that their very act of being has annihilated all other aspects of themselves, including their corporeal existence as a physical object, replacing it just with the concept of homosexuality itself. In that case they ARE probably 'a gay'.

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying gays as long as you aren't doing it like in an INTENTIONALLY bad way.  It's just a convenient plural.

Well no, but you don't have a vested interest either way. Most people I grew up with don't have a problem with referring to lesbians as dykes either, or ALL asian people as 'pakis'. I'm making a comparison here for effect - I understand that those latter two terms used by people are used INTENTIONALLY to be offensive. But saying 'gays' and 'a gay' is equally offensive to someone who IS gay: I don't speak for all gay people by any means, but I DO speak as a gay guy.


It also creates this idea that you can refer to and sum up the entirety of an individual in a single adjective, specifically one that doesn't automatically impact upon their personality.
I'm a person first. Gay comes a long way down the list after that.

I don't think "a gay" is the same thing as "gays" and yeah A GAY is never said in a nice way.  Also you really are less offended by using gay to mean terrible than this?  Idk this just seems really overly sensitive to me and I don't think it's the same as blacks or w/e.  Difference perspective I guess!

Yeah, I'm less offended due to the context of the use - by ignorant children who aren't expected to know better.

Most people would say that it isn't equal to blacks, and this is something that bothers me a lot. I wonder why? Both are used in EXACTLY the same way - to refer to a group or individual by an adjective that sums them up.

In terms of being over-sensitive, I'm not like CRYING or LOSING SLEEP over this, or even challenging people on it when I hear it at school or in the street. But on the internet, where it's much easier to discuss this kind of thing, it's hard not to explain when you disagree with something, especially if it is directly applicable to yourself.

YES I DID DO NOT WORRY!!!

I mean I guess where you compare it to saying blacks I compare it to saying Asians, it's just specifying a group but not in an offensive/hateful way.

I get what you mean on this, but Asians IS actually a noun. Asian is a noun as well as an adjective. Black isn't. Just like an American. But not a Chinese, or a Dutch.


EDIT: I said 'he's an asian' a few times and it didn't sound quite right to me so MAYBE I AM WRONG about azns.