The word “gay” has pretty much lost the meaning it once had, so it was surprising to see this correction in the New York Times:
An appraisal on Dec. 31 about David Levine, the caricaturist for The New York Review of Books who died on Dec. 29, may have left the incorrect impression that the Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin, the subject of one of Mr. Levine’s drawings, was homosexual. The description of Pushkin as “a gay man” was a reference to his demeanor, not his sexual orientation.
Despite the correction, it is nice to know that there is at least one writer who is still willing to use the word “gay” to mean, you know, gay.
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