AKA William

Andrew Belonsky will be writing a twice-weekly column for AKA William.

I’ve noticed something interesting in the news recently: an apparent return of the “homosexual.” Perhaps I hadn’t been paying enough attention before now, but over the past few weeks the H-Word has been popping up in the oddest of places, like the New York Times and the Associated Press, both of which have style rules prohibiting loose use. Now it looks like the H-Word’s making a bit of a comeback, and I wonder whether there’s a larger story unfolding, and, just as importantly, whether that’s necessarily a bad thing. But, in the end, it depends on how you look at language, and our many, many nicknames.

For over a century, homosexual was the go-to term for the sexually defective. Or, rather, deviant. It first entered the lexicon in 1869, when Austrian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny used it in a paper opposing an anti-sodomy law, but it wasn’t until 1886 that it found new, clinical life in medical circles, only to be joined four years later by its “normal” counterpart, “heterosexual.”

Most print media, aside from tabloids, which covered the seamy underworld of closeted gays, stayed far away from the topic. It was in the wake of World War II, when papers began covering – and endorsing — the military’s campaign against gays, that homosexual found itself inserted into the daily news, writes Professor Edward Alwood in his book, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media. The cat was out of the bag. Or was it the cock? Regardless, the pink scare had officially begun and newspapers went on a tear against a newly minted national nemesis, even going so far as to print names of the “perverts.” Aside from some sympathy from select media – like a 1969 piece in Time magazine called “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood,” which is available online – most publications kept an adversarial stance toward the gays well into the seventies. It was then, in the post-Stonewall environment, reporters finally began experimenting with a controversial slang word, “gay.”

Still, it was a rough road changing papers’ position on the H-word, and activists fought well into the 21st century to advance the more tolerable “gay.” (Little do many people realize, but that word too has a dubious background. Though “gay” began to take on, well, gay connotations in the mid-20th century, when it was equated with “carefree” – and therefore not straight – the word itself dates back to at least 1637, when it meant “immoral.”)

Though gay papers like the Mattachine Society’s One had long been using the G-Word, the first mainstream usage, according to Alwood’s research, came in the New York Times. Though now many of us know the Gray Lady as a generally gay-inclusive paper, a 1975 travel article, “The All-Gay Cruise: Prejudice and Pride,” caused an uproar in the newsroom. Alwood contends that publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was furious, and banned use of the word all together, aside from some select usages, like when in quotes. It wasn’t until the late-1980s, thanks to the AIDS crisis, which impacted recognizable celebrities and journalists alike, that newspapers began to rethink their stance on the homosexual.

Regardless of its history and at times dubious usage, activists were insistent that papers use the word “gay,” and real change finally came in 2005, when The Times officially changed its stylebook; the Associated Press and other papers, like the Washington Post, followed one year later. All of their standards on usage, including those on trans rights, can be read at the GLAAD website. Mainstream media’s linguistic shift banished the H-word to that dark, scary realm of conservative and religious media, outlets with well-known opposition to the alleged “gay agenda,” and it seemed that the reign of the homosexual had ended. But “bad” words never really die. They just go out of fashion.

After years of newsroom vigilance, “homosexual” has lately made a slight return to notable papers, and in worrisome ways.