Usually the people who joke around about people of other sexual orientations have their own range of issues. Sometimes ignorance and sometimes culture plays a role.

For the people who keep joking around about the homosexuals you can give them one statement to silence them: "did you know the prostate is quite the peculiar thing, did you try it?"

That being said, there are, obviously, sensitivities associated with these words that not everyone appreciates.

Political correctness is not liberal. Political correctness can serve as a protective device (you can think what you want, just be careful what you say) and it can also serve as a way to mock genuine issues.

Political correctness is not liberal: political correctness is a set of formulae (You will not say, write, or use in any way, any of the following words. Sign here). Liberal is intelligent, and requires thought. Thought recognises that there is power in language and a two-way interaction between what we say and what we think.

That has been Thad's Thought For The Day. 

I've never heard or read the word ghey before. I wondered. But I trust Marvey's knowledge of current American usage, because I have never been there, don't currently watch TV or films from any nation and... if it isn't in a Grateful Dead lyric then I haven't a clue. And even if it is, I probably misheard it or didn't have a clue anyway.

(getting lyrics on the PC while listening is a mind blower to someone who's hearing was far from perfect even at 20-something!)

So, kothganesh, in the unlikely event of my ever working in, or even visiting, an American office, it would not be wise to make my preference for dark-skinned women public? But gentlemen are still allowed to prefer blondes?