Funny = gay?

Well, I am feeling a little better today. The only thing I have been doing for the past few days is go to class, sleep, pick up the kid and sleep some more. After being a bad bad student today by skipping class all together and staying in bed, I can honestly say I am feeling much much better.

Now, about the title of this post. I have mentioned before that I have a favorite instructor. Now, you can ask my wife about this. I have liked this woman since my first semester in school. Every semester I have her in a class, my wife hears about her. After hearing me go on and on about her, she got to meet her and it all came together. This woman is awesome. You can tell she is not there just for the paycheck, she actually loves her job. She likes to teach by taking people out of their comfort zone and opening their eyes to the world around them. She is the most open-minded person I have ever met and she leaves quite an impression on people. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. So..here comes the story of the title.

I was in class the other day and we were covering Walt Whitman. During the lecture, Mrs. N. talked about Whitman being openly gay when it was not popular to be out and how he was fired from a job because of it. Keep in mind that the class I am in is an upper sophomore level course. This means that the people in this class have a couple of semesters under their belt. So, during the lecture I hear, in a southern drawl, "so he was funny?". Now, without skipping a beat, Mrs. N. replies "no, he was not funny, actually he was quite serious". I mean, how can you not love this woman?

Which brings me to the title... How do people come up with this slang for gay people? We hear all kinds of slang, but where does it come from? Sure, us gay people have a witty sense of humor, we get that with our rainbow card..but we are funny? *insert the hand motion here, you know which one* Or fruity? Is it because our symbol is the rainbow and they think of skittles and that is a fruity flavor? Ok...maybe I need to get back on the cold medicine.

*leaving computer to hunt down the cold pills*