Origin of 'gay' for homosexual

It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing;

it was once in the saddle I used to go gay.

- The Cowboy's Lament

Did you ever wonder why the Mass Miscommunications Media (MMM) consistently uses the term "gay" in lieu of homosexual? I take you back to San Francisco in the 1950's when there was persecution of homosexuals (yes, there was, even in San Francisco). One of the ways that organized homosexuals decided to take revenge was to prank society by generating the term "gay" as the substitute for homosexuals, thus establishing themselves as the cheerful people vis a vis drab heterosexuals. Until they changed it from an adjective or adverb to a noun, "gay" meant "having or showing a joyous mood" (Random House Dictionary of the English Language).

It happened this way: The leaders of homosexual organizations such as the Tavern Guild asked editors of the daily newspapers to initiate use of "gay" so that men oriented sexually toward other men would not be identified solely by that characteristic. Well, editors in San Francisco being the good liberal men and women that they are, and being opposed to the discrimination against homosexuals which still existed at the time, fell for the prank. Since the MMM consists principally of conformist copycats, the monkey see-monkey do syndrome which infests the MMM took hold and spread across the nation and then across the oceans.

I attribute the success of the prank to José more than anyone else. He was a diminutive, extremely effeminate, popular performer in drag who reigned for some time as "Empress of San Francisco" and who lit up any kind of gathering with his infectious sense of humor. He boasted to me one day: "By flaunting what I am successfully on stage before large audiences, and by inducing the media to change the way we homos are described, I have worked my revenge on society for the persecution of us." He cut loose with a big belly laugh as he gloated over his form of revenge, achieved through a MMM notorious for ridiculous terminology: "African-American," a combination geographical description converted into a "race"; Arab Muslims living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, a small portion of the region once known as Palestine that included Israel, identified as "Palestinians" to the exclusion of Israelis who would have to be included in that term if there actually were any Palestinians today; genocide bombers called "suicide bombers"; etc. etc. As the familiar saying goes, once the people working in the MMM begin using such nonsensical terms, they "take on a life of their own."