Gay Homosexual

This has been bothering me for a couple of weeks and I haven't known what to do about it - if anything. Usually if something bugs me it hits me pretty hard right up front and I react. In this case, it didn't really hit me until long after the fact and it's continued to nag at me so I've decided to at least get it out of my head and into writing and maybe that will help me decide if I need to do something about it.

A couple of weeks ago I was at Sugar's school helping spruce things up for the school's "Quality Review" (an odd practice by which a total stranger wanders around the school and meets with students, parents and staff to decide whether or not the school is well-run).

I had was in the middle of a project when I realized the time was going to run out on my parking meter. I remembered that a friend had said she was leaving the building and so I went running off to try to catch her to see if she could drop a couple of quarters in the meter - saving me from having to make a second climb up the four flights of stairs up to the school.

I ran into the school office, and discovered that my friend was gone already. As I stood there, debating with myself about whether or not it would be worth the ticket to avoid having to climb those stairs again, I heard one of the 2nd/3rd grade teachers on the phone with a parent.

I remembered that I'd promised to buy lunch for Sugar and realized I'd have to go out anyway. So I turned to leave the office and as I was walking out, I heard the teacher on the phone say,

"He called him a 'gay homosexual'."

I walked into the hall, shaking me head and thinking, "kids come up with the oddest things."
At the time I was struck by nothing more than the redundancy of the two terms together. I went and put money in my meter, bought lunch for Sugar and returned to school to finish decorating bulletin boards.

I was in the middle of completing my second board when I noticed a man hovering outside the classroom of the teacher I'd heard on the phone earlier. The principal walked up, spoke with the man in hushed tones for a few minutes and then went into the classroom and brought a boy, who I'm pretty sure is a 3rd grader out. The principal left, and the boy and man started talking,

Man: You called a kid a gay homosexual?

Kid: Yeah.

Man: Where'd you even hear that?

Kid: The other day, at the bus stop.

Man: Yeah.

Kid: Uh huh.

Man: Well, you can't call people that. Don't do that anymore.

Kid: OK.

Man: Really - don't. Do you know what it means?

Just then another teach walked up and started talking to me and I missed the rest of the conversation.

By this point I was uneasy about the whole thing. Something about the fact that the teacher called the parent bothered me...and also something about the tone of the man with the kid was bothering me as well. It all just made me feel out of sorts, but at the time I couldn't put my finger on it. Then, with all the running around that is my life, I kind of forgot about it.

But it kept coming back to nag at me every now and then and, eventually, I figured out what was bugging me. Why is it that calling a kid a "gay homosexual" is considered such an insult that it is worthy of calling a parent into school? I mean, he didn't call him the "f-word" or the "n-word" or some other derogatory term. He used two perfectly acceptable terms that are generally used to describe someone who is attracted to others of the same gender. Why is that an insult?

I mean, if it was flipped and was and ethnic things, would his father or guardian have been called into school if he called someone a "white Italian," or a "black African"? What if it was body features? "Hey, you tall brown hair!" or "You skinny big eyes!" Would those be considered insults?

Why is gay homosexual considered a derogatory term?

Now, I'm willing to concede - especially knowing the staff in the school and how liberal most of them are - especially the principal - that perhaps it had more to do with the kid making a sexual reference than anything else.

I hope that is just what it was...