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Where did it come from? Gay trivia!
isabelle:
Yes Ray, it probably makes you a lesbian.
GAY: It has been claimed that this was derived as an acronym for "Good As You", but this is folk etymology. This adjective was already used in the 19th century in the same meaning, well before the gay and lesbian movement started.
TJ:
When I was around Junior High School age, I went to see a class play at my uncle's high school. Bob was/is two years older than me. The play was Cornelia Otis Skinner's "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay." It was about two high school girls who had gone on a cruise ship to Europe and how, no matter what they did, something reminded them of their mothers back in the USA. The story had no connection with gays/homosexuals at all.
In regard to the word "queer," when I was growing up, my older sister sang solos in the Pentecostal churches we attended. I did sing with her sometimes and even with my younger sister. But, one song which stands out in my mind in regard to the word was titled "I Prayed Through." The opening lines of the song were:
"I remember when some queer folks came to town,
My pastor said, 'To that church, don't go down'."
The "queer folks" in the song were travelling evangelists who preached a salvation message and not a social gospel like the pastor of the song. And, they were also Pentecostal evangelists. And the "I" in the song "prayed through by repenting of his/her sins and accepted Jesus as a personal savior at an altar bench in the church were the revival was being held.
When I was in grade school, there were two interesting sayings. One was "Don't wear green and yellow on Thursdays because people will think you are queer." And the other one was to the girls, "Don't wear red and black on fridays because people will think you are pregnant." Most of the kids at that rural community school knew what pregnant meant; but, only a few of they knew what "queer" meant in the phrase. I am not sure that I knew either.
ProwlAmongUs:
"Friends of Dorothy became an secret catch phrase for gay men in response to the Wizard of Oz and the gay icon Judy Garland, (a bisexual woman), to identify 'fellows'. The death of Judy in June 1969 led to the Stonewall Riots when mourners revolted against a police raid of a gay bar."
Garland is also an icon for gays because her father was gay. Her parents divorced and her dad led a tortured life due to his orientation.
delalluvia:
I also read that Oscar Wilde put a lot of subculture gay expressions in his plays.
'Being Earnest' was apparently slang for being gay.
TJ:
The play, "The Importance of Being Earnest" was about a guy who was living a double life, pretending to be two different people.
It being referred to as a "Gay Play" fits in this forum quite well.
People like us who have left the closet have been accused of living a lie and/or a double life before we admitted our sexual orientation and became openly gay.
But, since we have been lied to about what it was supposed to mean to be homosexual by the right-wing proof-texting Bible-Clobberers, it was like two lies made one truth (sorta like "double negatives make a statement a postive fact" in the American English Language).
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