Thursday, September 15, 2005

The Other List

GLBT is the shortest current version of the acronym used to describe what some call our "Alternative Lifestyle" (Alternative? I'll get to that in another posting). For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the acronym, it stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgendered. But this acronym is growing out of control. It seems that no matter how hard you try to include an entire group of people into one acronym - someone always feels left out. I recently read an article in Clikque Magazine that said men of color don't think the word "Gay" fits them. They prefer something like "Same Gender Loving". So the acronym now looks like this GLBTSGL. Pretty isn't it?

In the past we have tried to find one word that generally covers this group of people - Gay, Queer, Homosexual etc. No matter what word they come up with - someone doesn't like it. But I think it is a much better approach than trying to fit everyone into and endless list. Unfortunately I don't have a good word that might work. Any suggestions?

Perhaps what we really need is more vowels in our acronym. Maybe that's where words like "Alternative" come in. How about GABLOSGL (Gay, Alternative, Bi-sexual, Lesbian, Otherwise, Same Gender Loving)? Really rolls off the tongue doesn't it?

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