Getting its start as a weekly article, “Q and Gay” is slated to become an addition to the Friends School monthly Whittier. Brought to you by the joined forces of the Whittier features section and the Friends school Gender–Sexuality Alliance, these articles will answer questions pertaining to all topics under the gender and sexuality umbrella.

Question: Why is the phrase, “that’s so gay,” offensive? I’m not homophobic; some of my best friends are gay.

Answer: Hilary Duff, in her campaign against bullying, put it best, “You shouldn’t say that something is gay when you mean it’s bad—that’s insulting.” Due to the fact that this phrase places light on an already marginalized group, use of the word gay, and other homophobic colloquialisms, only severs to deepen the stigma and misunderstanding which already surrounds the LGBT+ community. While one who uses this phrase may not intend to do so, it inherently makes commonplace out of the mistreatment of members of the LGBT+ community. We live in a culture that finally begun to recover from a lifetime of consistently persecuting and oppressing this group of people. To allow an element of that identity to be used as a synonym for the words stupid, bad, or ugly we would effectively be reversing the years of progress we have made. What if every time something was bad people said, “That’s so… lion.” It just doesn’t make sense.  In response to someone’s use of this phrase, I urge you to play dumb. Ask them what truly they mean and perhaps suggest a more appropriate word for their sentence.