You are right. ‘Gay’ means something bad to children, so they are forbidden to say it ‘in company.’ It was a perfectly good word, until certain people adopted it.
I think of the evolution of words that we cannot say. Words that become pejorative, because they are called hurtful, when what is hurtful is the thing that the word describes.
When I was a child there was such a thing as the Crippled Childrens’ Society. Then we could not say ‘crippled.’ So we said ‘handicapped.’ That became painful, and we now say ‘challenged.’ Soon ‘challenged’ will be ‘mean’ to say. Altering the language does not alter the underlying problem that the person is experiencing.
Crippled means propped up.