"That's so gay" controversy

[Claire Bowern]

> And in regard to John's question about whether 'that's so gay' is
> related to homosexual gay -- it's not a coincidence that 'that's so
> gay' means exactly the same thing as 'that's so queer'. (But I would
> argue actually means something different than 'that's so lame'. It
> would not make sense to say 'that's so gay' to mean, that's a really
> lousy excuse.)
> 

Really? "that's so gay" and "that's so queer" aren't at all identical 
for me, whereas "that's so gay" and "that's so lame" are much closer 
(but I don't use any of these, since I have a full range of Australian 
English insults to choose from and because I agree with Peter's earlier 
post).

Relevant here perhaps is the spelling "ghey", which apparently signals 
the derisive sense of "that's so gay" while overtly distancing the 
writer from accusations of homophobia. I say "apparently" a) because of 
my caveat above and b) because many of the examples produced by googling 
'ghey' are fairly clearly homophobic.

Claire