"The Young Turks" Redux

On Monday I wrote a post which took a swipe at Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian of the daily internet newscast The Young Turks for a recent segment they did on the use of the term "homosexual" (as opposed to "gay," "GLBT," etc.) 

That particular post generated a lot of discussion on our site. Some people agreed with my take that Cenk was being far too dismissive of people's reasonable concerns about the use of "homosexual."

But other AfterElton.com readers felt very strongly that I was out of line. Many couldn't see any particularly negative connotation to "homosexual." Or, if there was a negative connotation, then we should be trying to reclaim that term from social conservatives who have misappropriated it to malign us, rather than simply ceding it to them.

Others ardently pointed out that The Young Turks is a progressive news outfit supportive of gay rights in general - they are our allies, so we shouldn't be calling them out for anything.

Well, everyone can relax. Cenk and Ana didn't take offense and are still supportive of gay rights. In fact, they invited us on their show last night to revisit this "homosexual" issue.

I'm not sure we came up with a definitive answer of where and when to use the term - or what besides "gay" would be an appropriate alternative. But we did at least have an interesting and entirely civil discussion. I appreciated their having me on.

Here's the interview: