Dictionary.com Axes Homosexuality
By: James Finn
Tags: Equaity, Pride, LGBTQ, Music, Creative Non Fiction

“You know,” John told me as he strummed his guitar, “You don’t have to use that word. Your face twists up when you say it. Your eyes scrunch.”

I was 22 then, John was almost 30, and he was my friend and writing mentor. Because of John, I was about to have my first short story published in a big magazine, but I didn’t know it yet. He’d sent it in for me on the sly.

He was an Air Force staff sergeant, a poet, a singer, and completely straight, though everyone (including me for a while) figured him for gay. Stereotypes can be toxic, but at least they brought us together.

We were assigned to San Angelo temporarily for school, and for some reason John took me under his wing. We drank wine together, wrote poems and stories, and talked about how to make it in a world that judged each of us as an odd duck — for different reasons.

“You don’t have to call yourself a homosexual,” he repeated. “Don’t you know how that word got started?”

I shook my head no as he slipped a mixtape into his boom box and filled our glasses with cheap red wine.

Tom Robinson singing Glad to be Gay in 1978. If you haven’t heard it, you’re in for a treat.

“Relax,” John said. “This is Tom Robinson, you’ll like him.”

As an acoustic guitar started to strum, I heard a young man with a British accent intone, “This song is dedicated to the World Health Organization, it’s a medical song and it concerns a disease whose classification according to the International Classification of Diseases is 302.0.

I raised an eyebrow at John, but he shushed me as the man started to sing in a voice that sounded tender and angry at the same time:

The British Police are the best in the world

I don’t believe one of these stories I’ve heard

‘Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all

Lining the customers up by the wall

Picking out people and knocking them down

Resisting arrest as they’re kicked on the ground

Searching their houses and calling them queer

I don’t believe that sort of thing happens here¹

“What has this got to DO with anything?” I asked around a long sip of wine. I mean, cool song and all, but …

Then the chorus started:

Sing if you’re glad to be gay

Sing if you’re happy that way Sing if you’re glad to be gay

Sing if you’re happy this way¹

I didn’t know much then about how music works; I still don’t. But the chorus stirred me, even shook me. Robinson’s words felt powerful, his voice rang out to invite celebration. Hell, the tune was as catchy as it was radical. What I didn’t understand then was how Tom’s minor chords on the guitar contrasted with the cheery melody to force dissonance.

I didn’t understand anything about the British struggle for LGBT equality. I had no idea Tom Robinson was a pioneer, that he’d devoted to his life to the cause of LGBT freedom after falling love with a boy at school then spending years struggling to recover from a suicide attempt at 16.

“At that time, gay men still went to prison,” he told the Cambridge Independent many years later, speaking of being in love. “I would rather have died than tell anybody else that I was in love with a person of the same sex.”

I didn’t know mental health professionals later diagnosed him as a “homosexual” and institutionalized him for years.

I didn’t know he became a famous recording artist and wrote “Glad to be Gay” for the 1976 London Pride parade and that it became perhaps the best known of his hit songs. As an American, I had no idea Tom’s legal struggle was far from over.

“Homosexuality” would remain a criminal offense for British people under 21 until 1994 when the age of consent was lowered to 18. Criminal laws for “homosexuals” would not be fully equalized with those for straight people until 2001.

John explained some of the struggle to me as we drank our wine and listened to “Glad to be Gay” over and over. He told me the mental health industry in the US had removed homosexuality as a mental illness diagnosis in 1974, but the World Health Organization had yet to do so. (It would not until May 17, 1990, years after the setting of this story.)

John told me doctors invented the word “homosexuality” to describe pathology, abnormality, and mental illness. He said he played “Glad to be Gay” for me so I could think about that and feel free to choose different words to describe myself.

“But gay sounds so GAY,” I complained. “It doesn’t sound like a serious word.”

“Take this home” he said, tossing me the tape. “Keep listening until it sounds as serious as it is.”

I kept the tape and listened, but I worried. I knew I wasn’t mentally ill, but I also knew if the Air Force found out I was gay, I could lose my security clearance, my job, and even my freedom. I had a hard time accepting in my heart that homosexuality was was not a pathology, especially given I had to keep John’s tape hidden, just to be safe.

I had no idea my own struggle was just beginning, and that being gay would end up a huge factor when I decided to leave the service instead of making it a career.

I had no idea as I sat sipping wine that night with John that in less than a decade, I’d be out marching for queer equality in the streets of New York.

Queer, gay, homosexual, and bisexual

Words have power. They can cut like knives or heal like herbs. Tom Robinson has explained that in the 60s and 70s, he used “gay” as an umbrella term, similar to how LGBTQ and Queer are used today. When he sang “Glad to be Gay,” he meant glad to be any member of a gender and sexual minority.

Ironically, while Tom (very publicly) identified as gay in the 1970s, he has long been on the record as being attracted to both men and women. Today, he often uses the label “bisexual” for himself.

In 2019 at London Pride, he identified as “queer,” in the same sense, I think, as he used “gay” in his celebrated anthem.

Identity has power

How we think about ourselves and describe ourselves matters — to us and to others. I’m a gay man who identifies as Gay, LGBTQ, or Queer. I own all of those labels and identify proudly with each of them.

I don’t own homosexual.

I reject it for its clinical usage and its history of pathology. I’m delighted by Dictionary.com’s explanation for de-emphasizing the word:

The previously used terms, homosexual and homosexuality, originated as clinical language, and dictionaries have historically perceived such language as scientific and unbiased. But homosexual and homosexuality are now associated with pathology, mental illness, and criminality, and so imply that being gay — a normal way of being — is sick, diseased, or wrong.

Here’s to you, John. I lost track of you decades ago, but I’m REALLY glad to be gay, man. Probably a lot more glad than you ever thought I’d be. Thanks for everything.

Some words are past their due date, and “homsexuality” is one of them. It’s not a neutral term. Doctors invented it to call gender and sexual minorities sick.

Here’s to correcting dictionaries to reflect current understanding!