The Definition of GAY and the 1st Amendment.

So I watched a recent PSA with Wanda Sykes confronting several teenagers that were using the term "THAT'S SO GAY" in a manner that displeased Ms.Sykes. She goes on to describe the use of the term as being offensive by equating, "That's so gay" to "That's so sixteen year old boy with cheesy mustache.". The PSA ends with Ms.Sykes telling us to "KNOCK IT OFF".

This little gem of a PSA was brought to you by Thinkb4youspeak.com. A group that I feel mean well, but don't always think before they post a PSA. So I find myself a bit taken aback by this PSA, maybe its the way Ms.Sykes delivers her message, or maybe because it reminds me of people trying to control what other people say. I not entirely sure, all I know is that it really annoyed me.

I know what they are trying to accomplish and I commend them for that yet a PSA that shows Ms.Sykes chastising a group of kids for misusing a word that she herself is misusing just doesn't sit well with me.

Words change, meanings of words change, its part of the evolution of speech. The homosexual community took the word GAY out of its original context and it evolved it to its current meaning, now these teenagers further evolved the word to mean something completely different. Not necessarily a flattering, but then again to many happy and joyful people, being referred to as Gay with its current connotation might be considered an insult to them. So why the hypocrisy?

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, 12/15/1791. 
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So although they have a right to assemble and protest the use of the word Gay to mean stupid, they can't outright force anyone to "Knock it off".

Regardless of all this, I do hope that people can be a bit more sensitive to the feelings of others and be respectful, but I'm not going to get all thin-skinned if they don't. 

I've added to this post a couple of definition of gay as found by their respected websites. Feel free to look it over and see if you can agree with my view, or disagree.

Merriam-Webster's

Definition of GAY

1a: happily excited : merry <in a gay mood> b : keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits (a bird's gay spring song)

2a: bright, lively (gay sunny meadows) b : brilliant in color

3: given to social pleasures; also : licentious

4a: homosexual <gay men> b : of, relating to, or used by homosexuals <the gay rights movement> <a gay bar>

— gay adverb

— gay·ness noun

Origin of GAY

Middle English, from Anglo-French gai, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German gāhi quick, sudden

First Known Use: 14th century 

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary they posted the following definition:

GAY

late 14c., "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" also "wanton, lewd, lascivious" (late 12c. as a surname, Philippus de Gay), from O.Fr. gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charming; forward, pert" (12c.; cf. O.Sp. gayo, Port. gaio, It. gajo, probably French loan-words). Ultimate origin disputed; perhaps from Frankish *gahi (cf. O.H.G. wahi "pretty"), though not all etymologists accept this. Meaning "stately and beautiful; splendid and showily dressed" is from early 14c. The word gay by the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back at least to the 1630s, if not to Chaucer:

But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay
Whan that he wolde han my bele chose.

Slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.) begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense:

After discharge A.Z. lived for some time at home. He was not happy at the farm and went to a Western city where he associated with a homosexual crowd, being "gay," and wearing female clothes and makeup. He always wished others would make advances to him. ["Rorschach Research Exchange and Journal of Projective Techniques," 1947, p.240]

The association with (male) homosexuality likely got a boost from the term gay cat, used as far back as 1893 in Amer.Eng. for "young hobo," one who is new on the road, also one who sometimes does jobs.

"A Gay Cat," said he, "is a loafing laborer, who works maybe a week, gets his wages and vagabonds about hunting for another 'pick and shovel' job. Do you want to know where they got their monica (nickname) 'Gay Cat'? See, Kid, cats sneak about and scratch immediately after chumming with you and then get gay (fresh). That's why we call them 'Gay Cats'." [Leon Ray Livingston ("America's Most Celebrated Tramp"), "Life and Adventures of A-no. 1," 1910]

Quoting a tramp named Frenchy, who might not have known the origin. Gay cats were severely and cruelly abused by "real" tramps and bums, who considered them "an inferior order of beings who begs of and otherwise preys upon the bum -- as it were a jackal following up the king of beasts" [Prof. John J. McCook, "Tramps," in "The Public Treatment of Pauperism," 1893], but some accounts report certain older tramps would dominate a gay cat and employ him as a sort of slave. In "Sociology and Social Research" (1932-33) a paragraph on the "gay cat" phenomenon notes, "Homosexual practices are more common than rare in this group," and gey cat "homosexual boy" is attested in N. Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang" (gey is a Scottish variant of gay).

The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays, but the word evidently was not popularly felt in this sense by wider society until the 1950s at the earliest.

"Gay" (or "gai") is now widely used in French, Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Swedish, and Catalan with the same sense as the English. It is coming into use in Germany and among the English-speaking upper classes of many cosmopolitan areas in other countries. [John Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality," 1980]

Gay as a noun meaning "a (usually male) homosexual" is attested from 1971; in M.E. it meant "excellent person, noble lady, gallant knight," also "something gay or bright; an ornament or badge" (c.1400).