I witnessed something at work a few weeks ago, that caught me off guard. One of the managers was asking for a favour off one of the lads in work, it's a blue collar job so it's never been PC, "Carl, need a favour, can you do such and such" "Can't sorry Steve" "Go on lad don't be gay" "Steve, I've been taking cock for the last 25 years and you asking me to stop for an extra hours work won't stop me"

Everyone around just creased up laughing.

I learned these real quick in the workplace as a young adult, around a coworker with a mentally disabled child, and with a coworker who was gay. The abstraction is what made using such crude language easy. As soon as I knew someone affected by the words, I snapped out of it.

Abstraction, come to think of it, is what permits a lot of bad behavior.

I still say "That's pretty gay" but only for things like rainbows or LGBT bumper stickers.

Yep we used to use "that's gay" all the time. Never meant other than that is stupid.

Once upon a brighter time, gay was only colloquially used to convey happiness, unrelated to the sexual connotations there is today.

Such a sad time we live in where everything becomes a sensitive topic that can insult and hurt.

To clarify before I get cancelled to oblivion 😂 - you want your diversity, fine with me, good for you, but please there is no need to be a touchy one and reserve a swathe of labels to get insulted by when it can clearly be decided upon context if it was meant to be insulting or not.