The history of the word “gay” | The Gayly

Contents:

• HOW WE GOT GAY – DOCUMENTARY
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• TELL: AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF GAY MEN THE MILARY

HOW WE GOT GAY – DOCUMENTARY

HOW WE GOT GAY –Published on Mar 30, 2015, HOW WE GOT GAY tells the credible story of how gay men and women went om beg the ultimate outsirs to occupyg the halls of power, wh a profound fluence on our cultural, polil, and social the battl over civil rights for Ain Amerins, and equal rights for women, the battle over gay rights is the first great fight for eedom the 21st century. It is succeedg beyond anyone’s wilst imagatn, wh the speed and breadth of the victory stunng s tractors and supporters is remarkable that the battle for gay rights the Wtern world is advancg the battle over gay rights is the first great fight for eedom the 21st century.

What drove the gay muny to fally mand power was a disease that was cimatg s ranks: WE GOT GAY tells the powerful story of the stggle for gay rights, om the 40’s and 50’s to the prent day.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

It tak si the secret liv gay people were forced to live, at a time when homosexualy was illegal every provce Canada and every state Ameri and police harassment was a fact of a rich mix of never before seen archival imag and footage and ndid terviews wh activists and personali cludg thor Edmund Whe, and Village Voice lumnist Michael Mto, the documentary explor what life was like for gay people at a time when homosexualy was seen as a mental illns, and to be openly gay was to live utter exile om the social and sexual revolutn of the 1960s, gays enjoyed a new found eedom. In 1969, the ‘Gay Revolutn’ was unleashed wh the Stonewall Rts, as an angry mob of gay people rose up agast a route police raid on a Greenwich Village film tells the vastatg story of AIDS and s dramatic effect on the gay rights movement. Through an extensive terview wh AIDS activist Peter Staley, HOW WE GOT GAY shows how the movement for gay equaly be nsumed wh the AIDS crisis, and how the gay muny fally got the world’s attentn.

In the ccible of AIDS, the morn gay rights movement is the year 2000, almost 500, 000 people North Ameri have died of AIDS, but gay activists have also phed for a dg regimen that has transformed AIDS om a ath sentence to a chronic disease. Through the work of groups like ACT-UP, AIDS fally forc the issue of homosexual equaly, and leads directly to the creasg embrace and acceptance of gay people to heterosexual WE GOT GAY tak to the gay rights movement of the 21st century. Now the movement has evolved to a powerful work of discipled, top-down, media-savvy, Ivy League-staffed anizatns that know how to operate the levers of new gay anizatns -opt nventnal polil weapons: self-selected ndidat, polil actn mte, black-tie fund-raisers, rearch stut and lobbyists.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

They want marriage and fay regnn, equal tax laws, employment protectn, and hundreds of other rights nied to they are gay people the Wtern world live an era of unimagable eedom pared to earlier tim. Wh support for gay marriage at an all time high, wh antigay laws creasgly gog down to feat the urts, and wh young gay men and women able to e out earlier than ever, is many ways a Goln Age of gay & Animatn License Standard YouTube License. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy. ” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame.

TELL: AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF GAY MEN THE MILARY

”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay.

In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance. “It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists. Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins.

And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.