Mainstream Media and The Return of The “Homosexual”

I’ve noticed something interesting in the news recently: an apparent return of the “homosexual.” Perhaps I hadn’t been paying enough attention before now, but over the past few weeks the H-Word has been popping up in the oddest of places, like the New York Times and the Associated Press, both of which have style rules prohibiting loose use. Now it looks like the H-Word’s making a bit of a comeback, and I wonder whether there’s a larger story unfolding, and, just as importantly, whether that’s necessarily a bad thing. But, in the end, it depends on how you look at language, and our many, many nicknames.

For over a century, homosexual was the go-to term for the sexually defective. Or, rather, deviant. It first entered the lexicon in 1869, when Austrian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny used it in a paper opposing an anti-sodomy law, but it wasn’t until 1886 that it found new, clinical life in medical circles, only to be joined four years later by its “normal” counterpart, “heterosexual.”

Most print media, aside from tabloids, which covered the seamy underworld of closeted gays, stayed far away from the topic. It was in the wake of World War II, when papers began covering – and endorsing — the military’s campaign against gays, that homosexual found itself inserted into the daily news, writes Professor Edward Alwood in his book, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media.

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