By Richard Parker
Recent events have made the privilege of my sexual orientation incredibly obvious to me. For instance, never in my life have I been ridiculed for being attracted to women. Nor have I been characterized as a radical heterosexual activist. I have never been bullied, harassed, spit on or dehumanized in any fashion, simply because of my sexual orientation. I am very fortunate indeed. But there have been several individuals who haven’t fared as well in the past few weeks.
On Sept. 22, 18-year-old Tyler Clementi killed himself by jumping from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River. His roommate, Dharun Ravi, secretly videotaped Tyler having an intimate encounter with another male student and broadcast it over the Internet. Ravi and another student, Molly Wei, are facing charges for invasion of privacy and could receive a sentence of up to five years. Paul Mainardi, the lawyer for the Clementi family, released a statement saying that the family is “heartbroken beyond words.”
But this is not an isolated incident. There have been several instances of bullying towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.
Chris Armstrong, the openly gay president of the Michigan University student assembly, has been the target of bullying and open harassment by the assistant attorney general of Michigan, Andrew Shirvell. Shirvell has referred to Armstrong as “Satan’s representative on the student assembly,” posting several blogs with images of Armstrong with a swastika imposed on his face. Shirvell described Armstrong as a “radical homosexual activist” to CNN’s Anderson Cooper during an interview. But he claimed his protests were not concerned with Armstrong’s sexual identity. This strikes me as odd, considering I’ve never heard a person referred to as a radical heterosexual activist.
Bullying also occurs on the University of Louisville’s campus from some of the proselytizing efforts of various individuals. Those of us who are traversing to and from the Student Activities Center can likely describe a time when we heard someone claiming homosexuality was a pathway to eternal torture in hell.
All of these acts of bullying and discrimination occur within a social context where it is acceptable to mistreat members of the LGBT community. One part of that context that often goes unnoticed is how we utilize language. The word gay is often used in casual conversation to denote undesirability, negativity or unpleasantness. “I don’t want to go shopping there. That store is gay.” “I don’t want to go see that movie. I heard it was gay.” The reverse is sometimes true, with the word straight being used to describe something positively. “No, it’s OK. Don’t worry, you’re straight.”
One of many steps to change the social context is to alter how we construct the value of the homosexual identity in our everyday language. I am not advocating the use of the word gay to be used in the same fashion as the word straight, or the reverse. But I simply believe we should use the words already established in our language for that function. The words bad, unpleasant, distasteful, terrible, unpleasing and uninteresting, in addition to a great many more words, can be used in place of the word gay. In doing so, we may present our distaste of a certain person, place, thing or idea without contributing to an erroneous social context.
