Sure, no problem. This is an issue I am grappling with in a different way in my own life. How to acknowledge the failings/mistakes/humanity of the dead while still honoring their memory. Trayvon was clearly a young man at a crossroads whose future could have gone either way, but he never got the chance to make life choices for himself. Just to be clear: I don’t think a life has to be perfect to be precious and its loss lamentable.
I don’t know how old you are, but the usage of the word to mean “homosexual” within that community dates back at least to the 1920s, and was very commonly used by the 1950s by both men and women (judging from books I’ve read written in that decade). I first heard the word used that way sometime in the late 1960s (certainly by the time of Stonewall) when I was in my early teens, and by the time I started college in 1972 I think everybody knew what it meant – the Gay Alliance at Yale (“G.A.Y.”) already existed by then. (Even though the New York Times prohibited its use until about 1986!)
When I was in grade school people used the word “fag” to mean nerdy or just generally uncool. I had no idea at all of the larger connotation for years.
^^^ exactly! And the test that matters to me is once you are aware do you stop using it or say that it’s what you’ve always done and nobody ever minded? We used that and “lez” in mid-elementary school with no idea at all what they meant. Then we stopped.
I’m the type of person who believes that hate speech should be allowed because it’s apart of one of our freedoms as Americans. I myself have been called a “terrorist” (care to guess my ethnicity?), but it was all in good fun and I didn’t take it personally.
It is allowed by private citizens as long as it isn’t direct threats. That doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea or models good citizenship. Once you make yourself part of an organized group, that group may put limits on speech for belonging. CC is such a group and is free to state terms of service that we can like or leave. Also, government organizations and government supported organizations at all levels are supposed to be free of discrimination which would include hate speech both by the organization and within its purview.