Why focus on Berlin? There are plenty of issues regarding gay-rights discrimination right here in the US. Better yet, just stick to TECH. You don’t see Jesse Jackson throwing around video card recommendations on his blog, do you?

I cancelled my Fast Company subscription today, and let the editors know it was because of you.

You want to know the true irony here?

Whether people realize it or not the term “Gay” as used in the pejorative is not referring to homosexuals. In fact, it’s used (negatively) in literature as early as the 1800s even though it didn’t begin to be used to refer to homosexuals until the 1920s.

That’s why the pejorative use of the word is generally used to connote “lameness” as opposed to any trait that is necessarily related to homosexuality. That use is derived from the original meaning of being “Cheery” in that people who are overly cheery are generally considered lame by those around them.

In fact, a quick trip over to Wikipedia (under “Pejorative non-sexualized usage”) will show you that the British Board of Governors has actually considered the topic and ruled that the word has a dual meaning and that one of those meanings has nothing to do with homosexuality. I quote…

“The word ‘gay’, in addition to being used to mean ‘homosexual’ or ‘carefree’, was often now used to mean ‘lame’ or ‘rubbish’. This is a widespread current usage of the word amongst young people… The word ‘gay’ … need not be offensive… or homophobic”

So when used to refer to a homosexual the word is not a pejorative at all and is in fact descriptive. When used as a pejorative it is not referring to homosexuality. Next time, perhaps Scoble should consult a dictionary.

Robert if you have troubles with the word gay then create a greasmonkey filter to remove entries which contain it.

Why should you allow this kind of language on comments ? because you are not in your living room, FF is NOT your living room.
FF is open to comments, posting something means allowing comments, this is it. If you want to react to a comment, do it, but overreaction does not serves you, on the contrary.

And By the way Nazis are (are and not were) not a consequence of people using words against any group, I wonder were this comes from ? a trip to Berlin ? You think that a trip to Berlin allows you to compare anything that you don’t like with Nazis ? come on !

[ using words - even pejorative - against groups never created an ideology ]

About the Nazis :

Once installed Hitler used populism and the anger at the Treaty of Versailles to create an enemy so that people would be focused on something and he would be able to do whatever he wanted (does it sounds familiar to you ? )

———- start of quote —————–
FYI taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Racism_and_discrimination :

….Nazism was not a monolithic movement, but rather a (mainly German) combination of various ideologies and groups, sparked by anger at the Treaty of Versailles and what was considered to have been a Jewish/Communist conspiracy to humiliate Germany at the end of the First World War…..
….The Nazi racial philosophy was influenced by the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant, and was elaborated by Alfred Rosenberg in the Myth of the Twentieth Century.

….Hitler also claimed that a nation was the highest creation of a “race”, and “great nations” (literally large nations) were the creation of homogeneous populations of “great races” working together…..

….“Races without homelands”, Hitler proclaimed, were “parasitic races”, and the richer the members of a parasitic race were, the more virulent the parasitism was said to be. A master race could therefore, according to the Nazi doctrine, easily strengthen itself by eliminating parasitic races from its homeland. This idea was the given rationalization for the Nazis’ later oppression and elimination of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Poles, the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals and others not belonging to these groups or categories that were part of the Holocaust…….
——— end of quote ————

it’s all about ideology and a political view he only had one goal : rule the world !

Loren: that whole thread happened in, what, three minutes? For you to take it out of context (and misquote me, nonetheless, your quote about my use of David was totally wrong) is just as disrespectful.

You can block whomever you like. The point is the word Gay can mean many things depending on context. It was apparent to any normal reader that David did not mean harm to gay people. Gay can mean just not cool. People communicate in many ways and for you to totally misunderstand him and then berate him via your knowledge of Nazi history because of your trip to Berlin is idiotic. That aside language and the proper use of it is not an area in which you should be lecturing people.

tehKenny: a “block” is a perfect instrument for removing people from your view and keeping them from interacting with you further.

More on Louis Gray’s post here: http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/8ed0aa8f-0d0e-523e-11c8-0d5bf1cc7ae1/Political-Correctness-Goes-Overboard-on/