How a Times Reporter Eluded a Ban on the Word ‘Gay’; The New York Times, June 7, 2025

 David W. Dunlap , The New York Times; How a Times Reporter Eluded a Ban on the Word ‘Gay’

"Among the articles in The Advocate was “The ‘G’ Word,” about The Times’s refusal to adopt the word “gay.”

At the time, there was an explicit prohibition in The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: “gay. Do not use as a synonym for homosexual unless it appears in the formal, capitalized name of an organization or in quoted matter.”

Gay men found this rule to be demeaning. I know, because I was one of them. As a closeted young reporter on The Times’s Metro desk, however, I didn’t stand a chance of persuading the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (1926-2012), or the executive editor, A.M. Rosenthal (1922-2006), to overturn a ban they had put in place in 1976.

So I waged guerrilla warfare instead. Whenever I wrote articles of particular concern to gay readers, I peppered the text with “gay” as much as I could — in accordance with the stylebook rule. I also tried to limit use of the clinical, antiquated “homosexual.”...

The editor to whom the book belonged, Thomas Feyer, drew an “X” through the entry in June 1987, when the rule was superseded by a memo from Allan M. Siegal (1940-2022), an assistant managing editor.

“Starting immediately,” Mr. Siegal wrote, “we will accept the word gay as an adjective meaning homosexual, in references to social or cultural patterns and political issues.” That made my life easier, in many ways.

Today, the stylebook says: “gay (adj.) is preferred to homosexual in most contexts.”"