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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 6178662" data-attributes="member: 8835">While you raise a valid point that SOME people can't differentiate between me saying "that's gay" and my beliefs on how homosexuals should be treated equally under the law, I choose to live in a world where most of us can and do recognize the contextual difference.Just as we know what is meant when you say "Their, there or they're"There certainly is a possibility that some words or phrases can condition us negatively.  There's a reason why the N word isn't acceptable, and nobody should use it anymore.However, in equal turn, there is the concern that people who want to restrict my vocabulary because of their inability to interpret my meaning are bringing us closer to 1984's New Speak, where only carefully selected words are allowed in the vocabulary in order to limit and restrict our thoughts.Society is learning to not use "That's gay" anymore by virtue of knowing our friend standing next to us is homosexual and that the context of using it right then and there might hurt his feelings.Just like we all learned to stop telling jokes about a black guy, a white guy and a polish man at the water cooler when a chunk of our co-workers were black.We didn't learn this by restricting our language.  We learned it by being integrated with them and seeing them portrayed as real people just like us on TV.  The Cosby Show did more to improve racial perception than just about any other show.  Heck, Hollywood is doing more to improve and advance acceptability of homosexuals than any other approach from what i can tell and I think it is working.Just like America is farther along the curve for how to treat victims of rape (not perfect, just better than some other cultures).  If your sister gets raped, you are culturally indoctrinated to get a sword and hunt down and kill the football team that did it.  Maybe a bit extreme, but more of us are wired to hate the crime and hate the criminal than blame the victim.</blockquote>

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