When Will Hollywood Screenwriters Stop Using "Gay" As a Pejorative Word?

It's not funny. And the fact that this line is the first thing you see in the preview for "The Dilemma" certainly doesn't leave one thinking that this is going to be an iconic film in the comedy genre.

The crux of Vaughn's line up there is yet again another example of the word "gay" being used in a negative sense. "That's so gay." "This is gay." "You're going to do that? That's gay." "My parents chaperoning a dance? That's gay."

The word "gay" doesn't come off looking so pretty there. And it's not just "The Dilemma" that's guilty. Mocking someone or something as gay happens fairly frequent in entertainment, from Saturday Night Live to the 40-Year-Old Virgin. Is it time comedy, and specifically screenwriters, got over the "That's so gay" punchline?

Anderson Cooper seems to think so.

Cooper, who has been front and center in covering the recent cases of anti-gay bullying and suicide that have happened in Texas, California, Minnesota, Indiana, and New Jersey, spoke with Ellen DeGeneres this week, and he had some sharp criticism for movies like "The Dilemma" which continue to equate the word "gay" with something pejorative and pathetic.

"I was sitting in a movie theater over the weekend and there was a preview of a movie, and in it, the actor said, 'That's so gay,' and I was shocked that not only that they put it in the movie, but that they put that in the preview, they thought that it was OK to put that in a preview for the movie to get people to go and see it," Cooper said. "We've got to do something to make those words unacceptable because those words are hurting kids."

Does he have a point? Head to most any school playground on a sunny afternoon, and chances are you'll hear the words "gay," "queer," "faggot," or "dyke" tossed around, and you can bet they aren't being used in an endearing sense. But while in that context it's easy to see how these words cause pain and hurt, in a context like "The Dilemma," many folks seem willing to allow for more slack.

"They're just being funny," we might say. Or "It's just a joke."

But is it ever just a joke? Or does pejoratively using "gay" in any sense make it somehow acceptable to use as a slur in other circumstances? That's the point made by GLSEN in two videos they ran last year, starring Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes.

"Don't say that something is gay when you mean that something is dumb or stupid. It's insulting," Sykes says in her ad.

"You know, you really shouldn't say that something's gay when it's bad. It's insulting," Duff says in her ad.

These are perhaps tricky questions, and many accuse those offended by the phrase "That's so gay" as being hypersensitive and getting bothered by something that isn't really a big deal.

Sometimes I wonder if they might be right. But then I think about the one common denominator between Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi, Justin Aaberg, and Billy Lucas, five of the young men who committed suicide last month. They were all teased because they either were gay, or perceived by their classmates as gay.

Which means that somewhere along the line, and pop culture definitely shares some of the blame, we've conditioned people to use "gay" as an insult, and not to think that it has any consequences. But clearly, as the last month of news has shown, it most certainly does.

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