One new argument I felt compelled to respond to:
Lexxuk wrote:
stop stealing words to make your own then get insulted by people using the words in whichever manner they wish
I certainly had very little choice in choosing how language evolved, and I believe it would be impossible to identify one "side" to have single-handedly attributed any meaning to a word. I never "stole" the word, it evolved.
That said, some words have multiple meanings - like anything, context plays a role. Using "gay" to mean happy or "*****" to mean strange is certainly not an insult. But, at least in the US, gay has evolved to mean someone who is a homosexual. And the phrase "that's gay" has come about in the last 20 years or so to identify anything someone identifies as dumb, stupid, or otherwise "bad". And that stems from gay people being "bad". The argument is that taking what has become a term to identify a classification of people, and then using it in a negative way is demeaning. It is the same as saying "that's black" (which exists in the term "ghetto" as well), "what a jew/****/*****/***/etc." and so on
So while I appreciate that the term may have different meanings in certain contexts, THIS context that is at issue here is a distinctly American problem, and the context is equating gay people with stupid, wrong, bad, etc., which I have issue with.
As for other gay people not having problems with it, that doesn't make it right. And just because you happpen to know a few gay friends that think nothing of it does not mean I am in the minority here. Attention hog? Wow, I must be so full of myself for having ONE post that discusses a topic I feel passionately about (well, two if you count the bio thread, but that's more a side note of that post).