Well I am glad you are not the mod and If I were mod here I'd give you a warning for picking a fight. 

Yes, it's an immature comment.  Your response of doing the verbal equivalent of
getting in someone's face and calling them names is not exactly a mature way of pointing it out
either. 

Let's try to keep things civil here.

Hmm, gay has become the most widely used word for randomly cursing things. You say it involuntarily, not necessarily because you have anything against gays, but it proves that you should think about what you say before saying it. That's definitely one of my weaknesses too. Anyway, CSR, I'm sure that was unintentional and congratulations on your progress.

By the way, nicely said, samurai. I laughed. ;)

Only among the uninformed. I never see really mature people using it, even in the online gaming communities (where there are also quite a few "gaymers" by the way).

Samurai, you speak for board peace. A wise move. But I cannot bring myself to standing by and keeping my peace when bigotry rears its head. We're like that in Norway, for the most part. For the board peace, my apologies. For cracking down on the practice of insulting groups, I will not apologize. I hope that these two are to some extent reconcilable.

Just because some dark-skinned people call each other "niggers", doesn't mean it's not a bad insult - especially if coming from others. If CShadowRun is gay himself, he'll probably get away with calling things gay at random among people who know him, but on a net forum anyone need to realize that the reader cannot see your background. At any rate, his post implies that he sees his friends as 'gay' and himself as otherwise which removes this argument.

Carelessness will not excuse displays of bigotry in modern civilized societies. As you say, it's a bad habit and will be treated as such among those who care. It only takes a little respect to behave, in general. I myself am not a Christian for instance, but I try not to use offensive swear words - at least when I'm among potentially religious people. (Yeah, I fail sometimes - but if I do I'll fully expect to be berated for it and will apologize.)

I'm not one to use such words as insults, but I think there is too much politically-correct moralizing going on here. I would suggest that you learn to tolerate different points of view, DreymaR, before resorting to the very same kind of insults that you are moralizing about (ie: "uninformed punks").

You give food for thought, and I would not be too opposed to your description of myself as a "thought police". But what is the function of police? When working as they should, to uphold law and good and contribute to keeping good people safe from harm. In that context, I will be most happy to be a policeman of thought. Of course, when policemen go bad it is a horrible thing and we should all endeavour to not give in to corruption and needless violence.

At any rate, you should use "thought vigilante" instead since nobody hired us. We just do what we feel needs to be done. Contrary to vigilantism in the streets, however, we're not intruding on anybody else's jobs here. It is every man's duty to stay vigilant of his own and others' thoughts, lest we fall into slumber and something nasty gets a chance to grow up and smother us like in the 40's.

You spend too much time and energy on the connoted phrase "politically correct" in my opinion. It is no politics that makes me not tolerate harassment of minorities and other misdemeanour. It is my own philosophy, and I can only give you my word that I'm a thinking man and have not just inherited all my views from polls.

Tolerance isn't a magic term that will excuse anarchy. Anarchy doesn't work in my opinion. An anarchist will not be prosecuted for his beliefs by me, but if his/her actions harass minority groups I will oppose him/her. If you were to call that double standards, I would probably call you clueless.

I care. And I will keep caring. Call me what you will, and I may just wear it proudly.

On a side note: If a word becomes unusable through the actions of people of low moral fibre, then it will have to be given rest. Same as with the swastika, which we can now only use in some quite specific historical settings (I've used it in Roman reenactment for instance) without invoking undesired results. You cannot reclaim the word "nigger" as a non-insult, that train has left a long time ago. I'd like to see the word "gay" survive the onslaught of the thoughtless, but if it loses out then it will become another one of those words and either way it'd be best left alone by the malevolent.