A little less than a year ago, conservative commentator and professional sophist Ann Coulter decided that she would end her guest appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball program with the following valediction: “Al Gore – total fag.”

The night before, she had alluded to former President Clinton’s “latent homosexuality.”

More recently, on March 2, she again used the term ‘faggot,’ this time in reference to presidential candidate John Edwards.

In response to the uproar over her remarks, Coulter has claimed that the word is “merely a taunt” and “not offensive to gays.” Conversely, Grey’s Anatomy television star Isaiah Washington, after facing criticism for repeatedly using the term, publicly apologized and checked into a rehabilitation treatment program.

All in all, the media attention has brought up the question: Is ‘faggot’ truly an offensive word, or is it just a neutral insult?

Words can mean different things to different people. For instance, for many years in England, ‘fag’ was simply used as a slang term for ‘cigarette’, without any homosexual connotations.

But in the US, the situation is altogether different, and we must collectively recognize that fact.

The words ‘fag’ and ‘faggot’ are derogatory slurs, and a person can no more independently decide on a new meaning for them than he can independently decide a new meaning for the n-word.

Despite this, if one were to stroll through De Anza on an average day, he or she is likely to hear statements like “what a fag”, and “that’s so gay” at an alarming rate.

Most students claim that they have nothing against homosexuals, and that such terms are simply part of their slang lexicon.

But isn’t the very action of equating “gay” with something bad an offensive action in and of itself?

How would Mexican-American students feel if suddenly “that’s so Mexican” became a popular ‘neutral’ insult, or Japanese students if “what a Jap” was used to refer to any unlikable person?

At the end of the day, this is a simple matter of being minimally considerate. It costs us nothing to eliminate such terms from our daily speech, but doing so will be of great value to those among us who are truly hurt by them.

And, of course, there is one more very important thing to keep in mind: people that use racist, sexist, or homophobic words are not only saying something about minorities, they are also unwittingly saying something about themselves.