The LGBT Community is about as big a tent as there is.

[Call Me Wesley]

8. Signed, CMW.

This is not a reply to the OP (I fully support,) but my own statement on the issue.

Slurs are slurs, no matter what. I'm straight, and nobody really knows that I'm not just a dog typing on the internets. So, while I fully support and won't interfere what kind of definitions you use within your community of friends or family, I totally resent the lack of respect of even 'just' one voice who feels hurt by it. If you're going to use it still and know that you're hurting or insult someone you obviously care about, you're just an ignorant jerk/asshole/idiot/numb-nut. Feeling good being called that? I have other words to hurt you.

Since there was a recent - and still going on - eruption of freespeakers on DU, I can say this: If you truly believe that your ignorance is worth more than one bullied, insulted, hurt individual, then go for it. Defend yourself all you want with crude and non-withstanding personal evidence of 'it's okay,' because your friends get a chuckle out of it and totally understand it like some secret handshake you had since you were ten years old. Totally okay. For you. Perhaps not for others, because their live wasn't/isn't the same like yours. I know it sucks that there are differences and the World not revolving around you. It sucks terribly.

To make this short: What about 'this is hurtful' don't you understand? Do you need to hear it a billion time to perhaps change your own self-centered opinion? One's not enough? How about if it's you, one person, in the empty space of World and I?

What about respect, compassion and tolerance is so immensely difficult to understand?