I use gay primarily as an adjective to describe individuals and groups who identify or define themselves as gay.

I sometimes use gay in its strictest sense to mean merry and lighthearted, and thus apply it to certain aspects of queer culture, especially to aspects reflecting camp aesthetics or otherwise conventional expressions of male homosexuality.

I also use gay in these pages as shorthand descriptive to replace variations on the commonplace and often misleading series of static identity labels used to describe groups, institutions, and ideas organized around non-conforming sexuality. Thus, I sometimes use gay instead of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB,) and I may even use gay instead of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (LGBTQ) or other variations thereon. I avoid the use of these series or their abbreviations whenever possible because I consider them clumsy and inexact, and I reserve the option to apply gay or queer instead.

I use gayness as a noun to mean the condition or quality of being merry or lighthearted.