The first time I ever heard the word gay was when I was little (4 or 5) and watching a show about a serial killer with my grandparents. The show casually mentioned that he might have been gay. My grandparents, in their broken English, mentioned that I should never be gay and that it was very bad. Funnily enough, they never told me not to kill anybody LOL. So in my mind, being gay was then labeled as being worse than a murderer or something.
When I was closeted I never really cared about the word. I kind of sorta agreed that being gay/homosexual was bad. I got tired of the shame I was feeling and reasoned it out in my head that I was not a bad person. I just recently came out of the closet this summer. Now whenever I hear somebody call something gay I do feel bad about it. It brings up all those memories of me of feeling shameful and pretending to be straight. Sometimes I try to tell them nicely not to call things gay. One time my friend called his girlfriend's car gay and complained he had to drive it (it was hot pink). I told him he can't call it gay cuz I'm gay and I don't like hot pink cars (I really don't). He started laughing. He still called things gay though so I told him to at least not do it while I'm smashing since it throws off my concentration.
The only friends of mine I haven't come out to yet are two of my closest friends from high school. They call things gay all the time and it really hurts. Like half of the conversation is the word gay or homosexual acts. They mention those types of words more than any gay people I have conversations with. It gets rather annoying to hear yourself and your way of expressing love demeaned over and over again. I decided to stop hanging out with them since it's just not worth my while. They aren't going to change.
I'll admit, I used to say the n-word all the time in a manner similar to how people use gay. Most of my friends were cool with it. My own experience with the word gay taught me how powerful words can be so I recently changed my vocabulary (having a black roommate freshman year also helped, since he was his own special kind of funny racist when it came to white people). I also stopped being racist, since what I was doing was racism. The feelings of superiority recently changed to indifference (I don't care if a person is black white or w/e). I even recently dated a black guy, though we broke up since he wasn't really compatible with me. It was my only serious relationship ever.
I still call things ******** from time to time (something I'm really trying hard to change). I still call things gay too, but that's a leftover from when I was pretending to be straight. I curse a lot, but that's kind of how I was raised lol. I don't mind when people who are gay use the word as derogatory or my close friends when they are simply being funny though.
You can say it's immature that I'm offended, but those feelings of shame and self-hatred are always brought up whenever I hear it used badly. I know everybody has freedom of speech, but I also have freedom of speech to say it's wrong and have the right to choose to not associate with or respect people who don't respect me.
Edit: I really like using to word f***** though. It sounds hilarious. I call Doll (other gay smasher who plays Peach) a f***** all the time. He calls me a drama queen when I'm drunk. The rules above still apply to f***** though.
