The word homosexual is a word used nowadays to describe a gay or lesbian person, or someone attracted to the same sex. But that word hasn't been around for a very long time.
In fact, historians believe it was first used merely in the 19th century by a man named Karl Maria Kertbeny. He was a journalist from Hungary whose close friend growing up was a gay man.
His friend was blackmailed by the police, who extorted the man for being homosexual, saying that if he didn't pay the soldiers, he would be arrested for being gay.
The young man later committed suicide as a result of this blackmail. And this event caused Karl to take a close look at homosexuality, as well as fight with an “instinctive drive to take issue with every injustice” as a reporter.
Throughout his journalism career, Karl fought for gay rights, even though historians don't have any reason to believe he was gay himself.
Karl would write that the Prussian sodomy laws violated the rights of man, that the private consensual acts of two same sex people should not be subject to criminal law, and argued strongly that the Prussian law, allowing blackmailers to extort money from homosexuals had often drove them to suicide instead of paying the extorters.
And in those writings is where historians believe to be the first time the word homosexual was ever used to describe a gay or lesbian person.
By the 20th.Century, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) quoted Karl Maria Kurtbeny when they classified same sex attractions as a mental disorder. Luckily, they later reversed this idiotic notion in 1973, but now with the APAa using the word homosexual, it made the word mainstream.
Thanks to the APA, the word began to be used in a derogatory way by homophobes. This was similar to how the word coloured was used to describe races other than white, even though white is a colour too.
From here on out, things became known as the homosexual community, homosexual activists, a homosexual marriage, rather than just community, activist or marriage.
And for this reason, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, otherwise known as Glaad, placed the word homosexual in its list of offensive terms.
They later persuaded the AP (Associated Press), whose Style\|Book (Guidelines) is widely used by many news organisations, to restrict the use of the word homosexual and explore other terminology.
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