Wednesday 10 December: "Day Without a Gay"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> tomorrow is International Human Rights Day, and for the occasion two
> San Franciscans have spearheaded a protest and boycott (across the
> U.S.) on behalf of gay rights and in opposition to California's
> Proposition 8 (banning same-sex marriage).  two points of linguistic
> interest: the name of the event is "A Day Without a Gay", and people
> are encouraged to "call in gay" from work.
[...]
> "call in gay" is of course based on the idiom "call in sick".

It appears that one inspiration for the snowclone-y substitution of
"call in sick" with "call in gay" is this quote, attributed to lesbian
activist Robin Tyler:

"If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work:
'Hello. Can't work today, still queer.'"

This reminds me a bit of the "driving while X" snowclone. Here are
some other "call in X (to work)" variations attested on the Web:

stupid
grumpy
sad
crazy
dead
drunk
ugly
fat
stinky
gray [referring to hair dye]
gasless
empty
cold
well
healthy
rich
hysterical
constipated
allergic
seasonally affective
kidnapped
Republican
Democrat

>From a Google search of: <"call in * to work" -"call in sick|late|gay|queer">

(Many are of the negative form, "you can't call in X to work", or the
interrogative, "can I call in X to work?")


--Ben Zimmer

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