Posted on 01/02/2003 10:34:14 PM PST by chance33_98
Don Farmer is a retired ABC News political and foreign correspondent and a former CNN news anchor.
The Farmer File: Gay abandon
Friday, January 3, 2003
By DON FARMER, marcodon@aol.com
MARCO ISLAND — "Mommy, there's a bad word in that Christmas song!"
It was my 8-year-old grandson, Cole, riding with his mom, Laurie, listening to the car radio.
This is a child who rats me out if I use the "S" word —— stupid. He is a bright, militant wordsmith-in-the-making.
"What word?" Laurie asked Cole.
"Gay. They said 'gay'."
The music was the old Welsh carol "Deck the Halls." As in: "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la. Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la...Don we now our GAY apparel. Fa la la.."
Laurie wanted to make sure the ensuing discussion would be no more complicated than Cole needed it to be.
"Gay is not a bad word, Cole," she said.
"Sure is," he responded with the assurance 8-year-olds feign when they hope what they "know" is true, but aren't positive.
"It's bad. It's about men liking other men and stuff."
"But gay also means happy" Laurie said. "You know, cheerful. And that's what that Christmas song is about."
That mollified Cole for a minute, but clearly he was thinking about the "gay" thing.
"Mom, why would anybody wanna be gay?"
Oh boy. Laurie opted to go slowly, driving and talking.
"What do you mean, Cole?"
"Well when two guys like each other, they can't get married because they can't have babies, because who would breast-feed the baby?"
It was one of those moments when parents use all their strength to avoid bursting into laughter. Once Laurie suppressed the laugh reflex, she basked in the wonderment of a child being capable of careful reasoning, even with a bit of bruised logic along the way.
The inability of gay couples to breast-feed may not be their first challenge on the way to having a child, but it could pop up sooner or later.
Cole just got there sooner.
Maybe that's because he didn't know that "gay" ever meant anything but a reference to homosexuals or their lifestyles.
He didn't know the word "gay" has been hijacked.
He probably never heard of the 1890s, the decade commonly known as "the Gay Nineties." If he saw that on a test, he might assume it referred to the 1990s, in which the "new" gay lifestyle was the subject of much media attention.
This child might wonder why the 1920s were called the "Roaring Twenties" and whether the 2020s, just 17 years away, might be labeled "roaring" as well, by people who occasionally have impure thoughts about lions.
It's time to clear up the "G" word for kids of all ages.
The authoritative Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase origins say the new "gay" came into use in the 1950s, "possibly originating from the older (ca.1935) term 'gaycat,' referring to a homosexual boy."
Now, the American Heritage Dictionary's first definition of gay is, "having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex." The "gay" which means cheerful, etc., comes in second.
So when Cole hears music on the radio, he doesn't necessarily know it came from a different century, light years ago in terms of "gay" then and "gay" now.
Who knows, maybe he's got the breast-feeding conundrum right too.
Corruption of the language also happens, my "good ol' boy" (or gal, as the case may be.)
Signed,
Fetus + 43 years
Could be worse, could have been called the 'GayHole' ;)
Adult
Mature Audiences
Yeah, right. "I feel immature, so to become a more fully developed adult, I'm going to see a XXX movie tonight!" says Billy.
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