He is gay

March 02, 2017

The Epidemic of
Gay LonelinessBy Michael Hobbes

“I used to get so ecstatic when the meth was all gone.”

This is my acquaintance Jeremy.

“When you own it,” he says, “you have to keep using it. When it’s gone, it’s like, ‘Oh good, I can go back to my life now.’ I would remain up all weekend and go to these sex parties and then notice like shit until Wednesday. About two years ago I switched to cocaine because I could work the next day.”

Jeremy is telling me this from a hospital bed, six stories above Seattle. He won’t tell me the exact circumstances of the overdose, only that a stranger called an ambulance and he woke up here.

Jeremy is not the ally I was expecting to have this conversation with. Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea he used anything heavier than martinis. He is trim, intelligent, gluten-free, the caring of guy who wears a serve shirt no matter what day of the week it is. The first time we met, three years ago, he asked me if I knew a good place to do CrossFit. Today, when I ask him how the hospital’s been so far, the first thing he says is that there’s no Wi-

Responding to Teen Child Who Says He’s Gay

I’m devastated that my son thinks he’s gay. One minute I’m so angry I could scream — and the next I just sit and cry. We love our son, but we don’t want the influence of same-sex attraction in our home (we have younger kids in the house).

ANSWER:

Before we say anything else, know that our hearts go out to you in the pain and confusion of hearing your teen son tell you that he’s gay. The emotions you’re experiencing are understandable reactions of a concerned and loving parent. You’re wise to ask for input about how to handle things, and we’ll cover several thoughts here:

Respond calmly and respectfully

So, how should you respond to what your son told you? Respectfully and in as cool-headed and non-reactive a way possible.

But don’t panic if you and your son have already had a blow-up with each other. Ask for forgiveness and the chance to start over. Agree with him that you’ll both do your best to stay away from hurtful attitudes and actions going forward. As with all interpersonal interactions, you can only control your choices and behavior, not the other individual’s. Do your part to interact we

He is gay / He is a gay.

Nobody - especially not me - is counseling native or non-native speakers to use "He's a gay" and like phrases. Stick to using "gay" as an adjective, or as a plural mass noun ("gays").

I am, however, saying that you will encounter "a gay" from age to time in English (as you will encounter "a black"). I'd recommend that you not repeat these phrases. And learning about how they possess an offensive edge to them can both help speakers avoidusing them and help speakers understandwhat these usages connote when they are encountered in the world.

wandle said:
Such terms with 'a' may be used offensively and it is also real that many people avoid them for fear of giving offence. However, that does not produce the terms themselves necessarily offensive.

(In linguistic terms, we can say that 'He is a Japanese' is right, while 'He is a French' is not.)
Click to expand...

Using "a gay" (and even using "the gays" instead of "[no article] gays" or "gay men and women" or "gay people") is offensive.

I believe this could

‘A very camp environment’: why Alan Turing fatefully told police he was gay

For decades, it has uncertain historians. Why, in the course of reporting a burglary to the police in 1952, did the maths genius Alan Turing volunteer that he was in an illegal lgbtq+ relationship? The admission enabled the police to prosecute the Bletchley Park codebreaker for “gross indecency”, closure Turing’s groundbreaking work for GCHQ on early computers and artificial intelligence and compelling him to undergo a chemical castration that rendered him impotent. Two years later, he killed himself.

Now, research by a University of Cambridge academic has shed light on the reasons why Turing, a former undergraduate and lecturer at King’s College, Cambridge, did not conceal his homosexuality from the police. “There was a whole community in King’s quite different from stories one knows about from gay history, usually involving casual pickups and a lot of despair, hiding and misery,” said Simon Goldhill, professor of classics at the college.

His investigate has uncovered a “rather happy” community in the formerly all-male college at “the centre of the British establishment” while homosexuality was still ille