Jeff Erno

There are a lot of kids in my neighborhood. It’s not unusual, if I’m sitting on my deck or walking down to my mailbox, or even just working in my yard, to notice children ride by on their bicycles. Sometimes they are on foot. Some have skateboards. Some are carrying backpacks. Some are talking or texting on their phones. Most of the time, they are not alone. Teenagers, especially, tend to travel in packs.

Unintentionally, I sometimes overhear pieces of their conversations. Disturbing to me, is the fact that on at least four separate occasions I have heard these young people using very derogatory language. In particular, I’ve heard them shout out the word “faggot”. It flows so freely from their mouths, that they say the word without a second thought. It is apparently a very commonly used “put-down”. From what I’ve observed, teenage males call each other this term frequently. It now seems to be synonymous with the words “wuss”, “pussy”, or even possibly “loser”. Regardless of its intended meaning, there is one thing about the use of the word which is constant: It is ALWAYS negative.

I’m old enough to remember a time when the N word was used quite frequently. It probably was at one time as commonly uttered as is the word “faggot” today. But thankfully, it’s a word that is now almost never spoken. I no longer see it in print, hear it on television or movies, and even when it is referenced, it’s done so with a euphemism. Hopefully, it has at last been retired for good from our vernacular.

It makes me wonder how we finally got to a point where we became sensitive enough to racial sensibilities that the word became taboo. I think that the undeniable answer to this question is that integration is what made the difference. A few decades ago it was an anomaly to see an interracial couple. Seldom were African Americans the entertainment icons they are today. Sports figures were mostly white. The people of color who were in politics were few and far between, and they rarely held political office above the local level.

Nowadays we have people of all races living right alongside one another. We see biracial relationships so frequently that we don’t even think about it. We would actually be shocked to turn on a sporting event that did not have players of various ethnicities and races. We stopped using those racial slurs as these changes occurred. When we began to think of people as people instead of defining them by the color of their skin or by their ethnic heritage, that was when we automatically cleaned up our language. It was natural for us to retire the N word. Good riddance to the hate speech!

So why haven’t we done the same thing with sexual orientation? Why are these pejorative terms still uttered so carelessly? When we have gay young people coming out at the ages of 14 and 15 years old, why do we allow other kids to go around dropping the F bomb like it is a perfectly acceptable word to use (and I don’t mean FUCK)?

When I think of precious Jamey Rodemeyer, the fourteen year old Lady Gaga fan who committed suicide a few weeks ago, I wonder how many times he had heard that derisive term in his short life. What kind of message do you think it sends to our gay youth when we act like it is no big deal to use such language? I’ll tell you the message. It says to them, ‘You are inferior’, ‘You are a freak’, ‘You’re not as good as everyone else because of who you are.'