From: [email-masked] (Chris Ryan)
Date: 95-02-26 03:47:20 EST

For Immediate Release

February 26, 1995
Salt Lake City

A Suggestion: Use the word GAY
by Kathy Worthington
For four years now this editor has been exchanging subscriptions with or
subscribing to a wide variety of gay publications from across the country.
 I've purchased every issue of Network Q, the monthly video magazine. (Network
 Q, the Q is for queer, is currently on hiatus, i.e. not being produced)

My partner Sara and I have had plenty of time and plenty of reasons to get
used to the popular use of the word queer . . . a word that a certain
percentage of homosexual/bisexual/trandgender/drag people in the U.S. have
taken to using as an all-inclusive term that means all of us.  One word to
include gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people, drag queens . . .
anyone who wants to consider themselves a part of our "family," our
community.

In our travels, in our work, in all those publications and on Network Q,
we've heard the word queer used again and again and again and again.  We've
been to women's festivals, the March on Washington, Stonewall 25 and the Gay
Games.  Most of the time Queer is used by people who sound and seem to be
quite comfortable with the word.

You'd think that by now Sara and I would be comfortable with the term, and we
are, sort of. Queer is shorter and easier to write or say than
gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender.  But we never use it ourselves, depite four
years of editing a Utah publication for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and
transgendered people, and we really have no desire to.  It just isn't a term
we care for that much and we just haven't wanted to start using it.

We think there are many, many homosexual/bisexual and transgendered Americans
who feel the same way.  Yet proponents of the word Queer have a point. This
gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered/drag stuff can get pretty long, wieldy and
tiresome.  Queer is so short.

Gay is shorter.  And sweeter.  Nicer. And more comfortable.

Most lesbians get comfortable with the word gay before they get comfortable
with the word lesbian.  "I'm gay."  It's easy to say, easy to hear.  Even
many straight people can hear it and not flinch, which is not something you
can say about the word queer. And a huge percentage of gays and lesbians are
quite comfortable saying they're gay.  Some of us are even proud to say it,
happy to say it.

GAY. I think it sounds, and feels, comfortable and free.  Out and proud.  Not
angry and defiant like the word queer seems to say.  For my first forty years
queer was a bad, nasty, insulting word. Four years haven't managed to erase
all of that.

People have compared the word queer to the word "nigger."  So, have you heard
of a Nigger Nation?  Nigger TV?  Network N?   No, No, and No.

GAY.  We've taken a word that originally meant happy and used it in place of
homosexual until everyone accepts it as meaning that. Surely we can take that
same happy word and make it include bisexuals, transgendered people and
anyone else who wants to be included.

This is written by a woman, a lesbian, . . . and my partner, also a lesbian,
agrees.  We're activists, feminists and lesbians yet we think it's just fine
for us and other people to say the word gay and mean homosexual men and
women, bisexuals and transgendered people.  If we, two womyn, two lesbians in
our forties, think it's OK for publications, speakers, and writers to simply
say gay to mean all of us, then perhaps there are other women out there who
agree.  GAY IS OK.     We know there are people out there who can come up
with some clever chants and slogans. "We're Gay!  OK!  We're not going Away!"

Sara and I suggest that gays stop trying to change the meaning of the word
queer, a word so many of us still don't care for much (and some of us
loathe).  We suggest that instead our community, our writers, our speech
makers, leaders and others start using Gay inclusively.  Say it to mean
homosexual/bisexual/transgendered people.  If we can take a word and make it
ours, change it's meaning, affect the way it's used, why not the word GAY?

That's our/my suggestion.  For it to work, of course, other people need to
agree and help get the word out.  Please treat this like a press release and
publish all or any part of it that you care to,
either with or without my byline.  Use it as a guest editorial, send it out
in a mailing.  Copy it, distribute it in any way you please.  Especially if
you agree.

I am a forty-four year old Salt Lake lesbian, mother of two daughters 18 and
20, one of whom is currently in a relationship with a young woman.  A
part-time postal worker, I'm the founder, publisher and editor of a
four-year-old publication for Utah gays, the Womyn's Communty News. Sara
(Hamblin, my partner of two and a half years) and I are high profile Utah gay
activists.  We can be reached by phone in Salt Lake at (801) 288-9294, by
mail at P.O. Box 65102 SLC UT 84165, or by email at [email-masked].