The_Dunedan

Neither do I.

A'int askin' you to. I'm asking you to provide sources for some rather outlandish concrete historical claims, which you refuse to do. Neither of the two sourcings I reference above had anything to do with your historical claims, so both are irrelevant. And as for "spoon-feeding," you haven't tried, nor has anyone requested, anything of the kind. The only "feeding" you've tried has apparently been learned from prison guards at Long Kesh and Maidstone.

Did it. Looked at 'em. Nope, sorry, not relevant to, and frequently contradictory of, your claims.

A'int interested in a paper. Some backup for your assertions would be nice, though. You know, like a bibliography?

*Leans back in chair, props feet on desk, and laces fingers behind head. Smiles.*

Bring it. Let's start with this:

No, because prior to meaning "homosexual" the word "gay" meant "bright, happy, carefree, or cheerful." Sources to follow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay "the term gay was originally used to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637.[1]
From the mid-20th century on, the term came to be used in reference to homosexuality, in particular, from the early 20th century, a usage that may have dated prior to the 19th century."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gay late 12c., "full of joy or mirth," from O.Fr. gai "gay, merry" (12c.); cf. O.Sp. gayo, Port. gaio, It. gajo. Ultimate origin disputed; perhaps from Frank. *gahi (cf. O.H.G. wahi "pretty"), though not all etymologists accept this. Meaning "brilliant, showy" is from c.1300. OED gives 1951 as earliest date for slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.), but this is certainly too late; gey cat "homosexual boy" is attested in N. Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang;" the term gey cat (gey is a Scot. variant of gay) was used as far back as 1893 in Amer.Eng. for "young hobo," one who is new on the road and usually in the company of an older tramp, with catamite connotations. But Josiah Flynt ["Tramping With Tramps," 1905] defines gay cat as, "An amateur tramp who works when his begging courage fails him." Gey cats also were said to be tramps who offered sexual services to women. The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays, but the word evidently was not popularly felt in this sense until later (cf. the stage comedy "London Assurance" written 1841 and popular through early 20c., with its character Lady Gay Spanker, famously played by Mrs. Nisbett). The word gay in the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back to 1630s. Gay as a noun meaning "a (usually male) homosexual" is attested from 1971.

So we see here that the usage of "gay" originally meant a person who was happy or joyful (as in "the Gay Nineties). From there it moved towards describing openly promiscuous persons of both sexes, as well as describing the places where such people might be found (Gay House, Gay Paris, etc). Only in the 20th Century was the term "gay" applied exclusively to homosexuality within sexual descriptors, and only in the last few centuries did it acquire any sexual connotation at all. Even well into the latter half of the 20th Century, the meaning of "gay" was frequently still applied to it's previous definition of happy and carefree: hence why the Flintstones had a "gay old time" down in Bedrock.