Words and Meanings

Words and meanings
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

“Hail to thee, blithe spirit”, words from Shelley’s “To a Skylark”, chanted by my 11-year-old son, resounded through our home one evening. “What does blithe mean”? asked the young one. Reference to a dictionary yielded four meanings: cheerful, carefree, lighthearted and gay. With typical 11-year-old instincts he settled for the smallest and simplest meaning: gay. I wondered then, whether I should tell him that gay no longer referred to just joie de vivre. But then I postponed the decision to another day and another time. Innocence is like the skylark, “bird thou never wert” and I did not want to snatch it away from my little one.

All went well until one day when I was interrogating my older son, who happened to be in a black mood, on his return from school. The little one very helpfully informed me that his older brother and his friends were quite gay in school and only pulled a long face at home. My teenaged son cried blue murder while I hastened to admonish the little one and tell him that thenceforth gay was not to be used as a synonym for happy or cheerful because it had several other meanings. But I left it at that yet again. Honestly, I couldn’t fathom how to explain sexual preferences to a 10 year old.

We live in the information age and satellites beam the world into our bedrooms. Another day and another time came sooner, than later. Watching the news on television, there was a report on San Francisco’s high-profile celebration of some 3,000 homosexual marriages and the subsequent call by the US President George Bush to amend the American Constitution to ban gay marriages. His pre-election rhetoric was, “If we’re to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America”. The report was accompanied by visuals of placard carrying protestors. What are they protesting queried my son. Why can’t they be gay and get married? Don’t you and dad have a gay marriage, he asked. While my husband’s jaw dropped I decided that the time had come to grab the gay word by the horns.

As I fumbled, the dictionary came to my rescue, yet again as I read out: “Gay refers to homosexuals and homosexual refers to persons who prefer the same sex”. I carried on with increasing confidence, “While it is usual for persons to have a preference for the opposite sex, however those that prefer the same are gay.” Like that movie “Girl Friends” and “Will and Grace” on television, added my cynical teenager!.

But I wondered then about who had thought of using a word that connoted fun and cheerful, lighthearted happiness for an unusual preference. It had certainly taken the innocence out of being happy and gay and as the newly anointed American President fears, changed its meaning forever.