Gay Rights & Destroying the Term Faggot

Faggot

Inside this word lay a history of hate for homosexuals. In every derogatory sense it was used to humiliate and disparage. In a recent episode of South Park “F-Word”  the show used satire to bring up an excellent point about the changing meaning of the word.

As South Park pointed out, the word started as a slang for an old woman. Then modified to “faggot gatherer” which related to making a living by picking up sticks. “It may also derive from the sense of ’something awkward to be carried’ (compare the use of the word ‘baggage’ as a pejorative term for old people in general).” Online Etymology

Point being that this term, like every word, is malleable and changing depending on it usage. Today, people say the word in everyday circumstances not referring in the least to homosexuals. South Park gave this comparison, “If you are cut off in traffic and yell – faggot! – Do you mean to say that you are calling this person homosexual or that they are an asshole?”.  It is a word that is used so often that it lost its particular hatred against gays because of its wide context.

In my personal experience, the context in which I have heard this word is largely directed at people fitting this description … Not really Harley riders, but it is satire. – O.K. I enjoy riding my motorcycle and maybe it does fit!

This is more than stupid satire, there is a truth in this humor. For this joke to work it has to play on the common notion that people say this word without having any malice towards gays. What a novel change in the attitudes of society.  For differing generations of people to say the same word but have entirely different meanings is characteristic of a culture that is losing prejudice.

I will not temper this analysis. Yes, people still use this word to attack and belittle. Evangelical coalitions still deliberately deprive other persons of civil rights. They would use this word to destroy. But it is all for not. Adolescents are cracking the very foundations; if they overwhelming use the word in the newest context, then it is inevitable.

Switching gears abruptly… As a former San Franciscan I present to you an issue that is an utmost priority to those hurt by the callous use of this word.  Using the 501(c)(3) tax loophole, the Mormons – and other religious groups – have spent countless monies fighting Proposition 8. Empathizing with the victims, here is the trailer for an upcoming documentary about the hate.

On a special shot across the bow of the anti-gay religious folks; what if you’re wrong? What if, when confronted by this hypothetical maker, it asks you why you fought so hard for the continuation of suffering on others? Will you respond that it was in your book – that highly edited book of allegories – to fight this alleged sin? That you so fervently believed it was the word of god that you ignored history, logic, reason… science. Maybe you thought it was morally uncomfortable, but then again, you likely grasped this conservative idea and thought “the way things were” is better. The logic is so perverse that it even has name: Argumentum ad consequentiam.

Destroying this word is a sign of the crumbling grasp the supposed “moral authorities” have over America. Welcome to progressive thought.