Editorial: Queer was OK after all?

A proposal on Toledo Council’s agenda Wednesday would allocate $50,000 of the city’s general funds to creating a health-care model for gay and transgender people.

The goal of the legislation appears to be to establish a process to grant a stamp of approval for which local health-care providers could qualify to indicate they are welcoming to gay and transgender patients.

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We reserve opinion on whether this is an appropriate expenditure for the city. All people should receive health care that is appropriate and in which patients feel respected.

Attached to the ordinance is a 14-page document created by NW Ohio LGBTQ+ Coalition, Equality Toledo, and Solace Health and Wellness.

It uses the word “queer” several times as a synonym for homosexual, with blithe disregard for what at least a couple of generations of Americans were told was an epithet.

For example, “In some healthcare fields, there are multiple providers locally who promote themselves as providing inclusive care for queer people.”

Students in grade school in the ’60s and ’70s and probably still today learned that the word was not polite and was in fact derogatory. It was the type of thing that would not have been tolerated in class discussions, or on a science fair poster, or on the school yard. It would likely have meant after-school detention. Use of that word in a job or college application in reference to a gay person would have resulted in immediate rejection.

Now, it’s promoted as an acceptable term.

It’s even found in literature produced by the city of Toledo to characterize homosexuals. You’ll find it in the “Action Plan” attached to ordinance 226-24 on council’s agenda.

We understand that a group of Americans who has been bullied, denied rights, and worse earns the right to “own” the terms that were once hurled against them.

Nobody else earned that right, and that’s why we don’t use derogatory terms for different demographic groups if we know they are offensive.

We suspect the word “queer” would still be regarded as disrespectful from anyone not approved for its use.

Toledo City Council’s use of the word “queer” disrespects those generations of Americans who dutifully accepted that the word is an epithet and now wonder why, if it’s acceptable to be used in official city documentation, they were chastised with punishment for using it.

In using the word “queer,” city council shows disdain for everyone who took the admonition to heart and banished the word from their lexicon.

The document should be pulled from the city’s legislative docket and amended. Additionally anyone who was punished for its use should get reparations, or at least an apology.