In an effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of language, corporate bigwigs have taken on the daunting task of morality police. Just this week, an Asian satellite channel removed the words ‘gay’ (ah!) and ‘lesbian’ (scary!) from the Academy Awards telecast. The executives, and I quote because you can’t make this shit up, thought they had “a responsibility to take the sensitivities and guidelines of all [their] markets into consideration”. Of course, I note that when they take sensitivities and guidelines of markets into consideration, it’s always the ignorant faction of the population that they are considering.

In related news, it was released today over at The Consumerist that a woman was banned from XBOX Live for identifying herself as a lesbian. Other players didn’t want to see, and didn’t want their kids to see, that kind of thing. Other players harassed her. She was banned. Let me repeat those last two sentences. Other players harassed her. She was banned.

This is all an eerily familiar scenario. I’ve lived this scenario. In fact, I was banned twice, once from a dorm room and once from an on-campus apartment.

Sorry to break it to you, as I realize that you believe firmly in your plan as both ingenious and foolproof, haters, but you can’t ban the gay out of people.