I know that, you know that, but they don’t see it that way and you can’t reason with them.
The only thing that has even come close to working is pointing out that they are asking for the right to let ‘big brother’ know their sexual orientation and have a list of who is gay... the privacy issue does spook them.
What if you told them that you were going to start calling them (and use the derogatory term for gays)? But they would protest that as an attack and offensive. But say to them, it’s just a slang word, it doesn’t mean anything. By definition, it’s the same as any other word referring to a gay person. Why do you care? Why can’t I just change the meaning of that word to mean something I want it to mean. It doesn’t bother me, why should it bother you? It’s because the word has meaning to you, and you are willing to fight against its use in an inappropriate way.
Why is that any different than Christians wanting to defend the definition of a word they care about? Christians are fighting against people changing the meaning of a word that means something to them. They don’t want the word used in an inappropriate way. Words mean something to all of us, and it’s not fair to say some words can be dictated as off-limits by the gay community, but Christians don’t have the same right to defend words that mean something in their community.
It probably wouldn’t work, though, because I used the word ‘fair’ and that word doesn’t go both ways anymore. (sigh)