Gay

In contemporary usage, the adjective gay usually describes a person's sexual orientation. In earlier usage, the word meant "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy", though this usage is infrequent today. Gay sometimes also refers to the culture of homosexual individuals, as in "gay history", or to things perceived by others to be typical of gay people, as in "gay music". The word gay is sometimes used to refer to same-sex relationships more generally, as in "gay marriage", although this usage is discouraged by some LGBT supporters: the rationale is that this usage is exclusive of bisexual and transgendered people. While gay applies in some contexts to all homosexual people, the term lesbian is gender-specific: it is used exclusively to describe homosexual women. Sometimes gay is used to refer only to men.