The history of the word “gay” | The Gayly

Contents:

• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• WHEN IS NATNAL GAY DAY?
• MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE GAY? DEFN AND MEANG OF GAY
• FLORIDA JT PASSED THE "DON'T SAY GAY" BILL. HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS FOR KIDS
• GAY PRI
• DEFINITIONS FOR GAY DAYGAY DAY
• GAY
• GAY (HOMOSEXUAL) AND GAY (HAPPY)

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

Ci celebrate Gay Pri Month. The origal anizers chose this month to pay homage to the Stonewall uprisg June 1969 New York Cy, which helped spark the morn gay rights movement.

LGBTQ is an acronym meang lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer.

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police raid the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar New York’s Greenwich Village, and began hlg ctomers outsi. New York’s gay muny, fed up after years of harassment by thori, broke out neighborhood rts that went on for three days.

WHEN IS NATNAL GAY DAY?

The uprisg beme a talyst for an emergg gay rights movement as anizatns such as the Gay Liberatn Front and the Gay Activists Alliance were formed, moled after the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement. A year after the Stonewall rts, the natn’s first Gay Pri march were held. In 1978, artist and signer Gilbert Baker was missned by San Francis cy supervisor Harvey Milk – one of the first openly gay elected officials the US – to make a flag for the cy’s upg Pri celebratns.

Baker, a proment gay rights activist, gave a nod to the strip of the Amerin flag but drew spiratn om the rabow to reflect the many groups wh the gay muny. Pri, formerly known as Gay Pri, is a regnn of LGBTQ inty, affirmatn of equal rights, and celebratn of visibily, digny, and diversy the LGBTQ muny.

MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH

G: Gay.

Why gay or lbian and not “homosexual”? While the word homosexual is still ocsnally ed some ntexts, you might have noticed that don’t make an appearance any versn of the LGBTQ acronym. As our age note on the term stat, “up until 1973, homosexualy was listed The Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs (DSM), psychiatry’s standard reference on the classifitn of mental illns.

People aware of this former tegorizatn feel that the term homosexual still rri a negative nnotatn. ” In fact, the term homosexual was liberately rejected by early gay rights activists bee, acrdg to The New York Tim, “they did not want to be intified as exclively sexual begs. For the and other reasons, the term homosexual is wily nsired disparagg and offensive.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE GAY? DEFN AND MEANG OF GAY

Instead, the terms gay and lbian are generally preferred. Gay, on the other hand, n be ed to scribe a person of any genr who experienc same-sex attractn, although is most often ed to scribe a man who is attracted to men.

The days, the term homosexual is typilly limed to medil ntexts, if ed at all. On June 28, 1969, the New York Cy police raid the Stonewall Inn, a bar equented by gay and genr-nonnformg people (at a time when terms like LGBTQ didn’t yet exist). They attempted to arrt the gay and trans bar patrons, which started a seri of protts agast the police.

FLORIDA JT PASSED THE "DON'T SAY GAY" BILL. HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS FOR KIDS

Partially rponse to Stonewall, 1970, queer activists New York Cy anized a march to Central Park wh the theme “Gay Pri. Trans activist Slyvia Rivera particular advoted for the more forceful slogan “Gay power. The term queer, like the term homosexual, has a b of a troubled history.

GAY PRI

However, unlike homosexual, has been wily reappropriated by the LGBTQ muny as a label.

DEFINITIONS FOR GAY DAYGAY DAY

Queer lerally means “strange or odd om a nventnal viewpot, ” and by at least by the late 1800s, queer was ployed as a rogatory term for an effemate or gay man. In 1990, this effort foced on queer as a llective term for gay and lbian people. Queer was seen as a way to refer to gays and lbians whout beg genr-sentialist or g divisns wh the muny.

GAY

We have already touched on the terms gay and lbian.

homoromantic: a person who is romantilly attracted to people of the same sex or genr. Do you know what the word gay really means?

The word gay dat back to the 12th century and om the Old French “gai, ” meang “full of joy or mirth. For centuri, gay was ed monly speech and lerature to mean happy, reee, bright and showy, and did not take on any sexual meang until the 1600s.

GAY (HOMOSEXUAL) AND GAY (HAPPY)

At that time the meang of gay as reee evolved to imply that a person was unrtraed by morals and prone to nce and promiscuy. A prostute might have been scribed as a “gay woman” and a womanizer as a “gay man. “Gay hoe” was monly ed to refer to a brothel and, later, “gaiety” was ed as a mon name for certa plac of entertament.

In the 1890s, the term “gey t” (a Sttish variant of gay) was ed to scribe a vagrant who offered sexual servic to women or a young traveler who was new to the road and the pany of an olr man. This latter e suggts that the younger man was a sexually submissive role and may be among the first tim that gay was ed implyg a homosexual relatnship.

In 1951, gay appeared the Oxford English Dictnary for the first time as slang for homosexual, but was most likely ed this way “unrground” at least 30 years earlier. I jt went gay.