Good As You (“gay” backronym)
“Good As You” is a backronym (back acronym) of the word “gay.” Some people like it and some do not.
“Good As You?” (a program on “Brass Tacks” on BBC2) was printed in the Huddersfield (UK) Daily Examiner on May 24, 1988. “At one point someone invented the most appalling acronym for gay—Good As You” was printed in Gay Times (London, UK) in May 1992.
“My wife reminds me on a visit we made to San Francisco in 1988 many homosexuals—of either gender—were to be seen there wearing large badges that stated ‘I am Gay—Good As You.’ She further reminds me that these badges were worn and the sentiments expressed 25 years’ ago” was printed in the Birmingham (UK) Post on July 4, 1992.
Wikipedia: Good As You
Good As You is a support and social group for LGBT people and others questioning their sexuality in Bangalore. It started in 1994 and is one of the longest surviving groups that advocates equal rights for homosexuals and other sexual minorities in Bangalore.
Newspapers.com
24 May 1988, Huddersfield (UK) Daily Examiner, “BBC2,” pg. 2, col. 2:
8:30 BRASS TACKS Good As You? On the day the law banning the promotion of homosexuality comes into force, Gerry Northam asks how it will affect youngsters and the support they received from teachers, youth workers and local authority-funded helplines.
Newspapers.com
24 May 1988, Huddersfield (UK) Daily Examiner, pg. 2, col. 7:
Promotion ban fears
BRASS Tacks examines the effects of the law banning the promotion of homosexuality through the eyes of a family in Leeds whose 16-year-old son is gay in Good As You? (BBC2, 8:30pm).
Newspapers.com
3 August 1990, Huddersfield (UK) Daily Examiner, “Letters to the Editor: Parents of Gay Children,” pg. 8, cols. 2-6:
Also, What is wrong with the word “gay”? Gay people chose this word for themselves—this is one thing they did choose—and it’s far better than the words many heterosexuals choose to describe gay people. Anyway, we in this organization choose to look on gay as meaning Good As You!
(...)
JOY, VAL, ALAN AND ALL THE REST OF THE PARENTS’ GROUP
Parents’ Friend
Newmarket, Otley
May 1992, Gay Times (London, UK), “The politics of Queen—Papering over the cracks” by Richard Smith, pg. 28, col. 3:
At one point someone invented the most appalling acronym for gay—Good As You.
Newspapers.com
4 July 1992, Birmingham (UK) Post, “Letters,” pg. 6, col. 3:
The use of “gay” in the Good As You sense is not clever post-rationalisation. My wife reminds me on a visit we made to San Francisco in 1988 many homosexuals—of either gender—were to be seen there wearing large badges that stated “I am Gay—Good As You.”
She further reminds me that these badges were worn and the sentiments expressed 25 years’ ago.
DR A P JOSEPH
Edgbaston,
Birmingham.
Newspapers.com
23 August 1995, Evening Standard (London, UK), “If I go back to nothing, so be it says TV superstar in emotional gay radio interview in London” by Martin Delgado and Peter Gruner, pg. 1, cols. 1-2:
(Michael—ed.) Barrymore spoke haltingly and often emotionally during a half-hour conversation with presenter Jeremy Joseph on G.A.Y.—Good As You—a late-night gay and lesbian programme on 24-hour multi-cultural Spectrum Radio.
Newspapers.com
24 August 1995,
He told Jeremy Joseph, the host of GAY (Good As You) on London’s Spectrum Radio: “I came from nothing. If I end up back there, if my career’s going to go to, then it will have to be, won’t it? I’ll have to start again.”
OCLC WorldCat record
Good as you : mothers’ reactions to gay sons : an exploratory study
Author: Cathy Falconer
Publisher: Derry : Guildhall Press, 2003.
Edition/Format: Print book : English
YouTube
Geri Halliwell G.A.Y ★Good As You★
Mar 16, 2008
art1ej
B-Side To One Of The Singles On The Schizophonic Album..
OCLC WorldCat record
Genitori G.A.Y. : good as you
Author: Sara Kay
Publisher: Roma : Tempesta editore, [2014]
Series: Vita raccontata
Edition/Format: Print book : Italian
OCLC WorldCat record
Good as you : from prejudice to pride, a gay British history
Author: Paul Flynn
Publisher: London : Ebury Digital, 2017.
Edition/Format: eBook : Document : English
Summary:
‘One of the most important books about gay culture in recent times’ The QuietusIn 1984 the pulsing electronics and soft vocals of Smalltown Boy would become an anthem uniting gay men.
Dictionary.com
G.A.Y.
or Good As You [ gey ] or [ good az yoo ]
Published September 11, 2020
(...)
It’s hard to tell when exactly G.A.Y., a backronym for good as you, caught on in the LGBTQ rights movement, but the 1994 founding of Good As You Bangalore, an LGBTQ support group in India, helped cement it as a sometime slogan for sexual equality. G.A.Y. allows activists to re-appropriate a label while making the incisive comment that heterosexual people are no better than them.
Other notable instances come from Jeremy Hooper, the LGBTQ activist and author of If It’s A Choice, My Zygote Chose Balls who founded Good As You in 2005, a website dedicated to LGBTQ activism. Hooper has used the Twitter handle @goodasyou since 2007.