Skip to main content
Skeptics

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

12
  • 27
    This seems to be saying that Obama recognised the shift, and was one of many people around that time making the change. He's being congratulated for adopting the term, not credited with originating it. The quoted text doesn't say anything about why the shift was happening.
    – IMSoP
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 13:07
  • 7
    The article references one statement released by Obama that uses the term LGBT, which the author took as an indicator that it had become the preferred term. It does not go so far as to credit Obama for popularizing the term, his use of it was merely an indicator that it had become popularized. This article was published 4 days after the statement, clearly the author could not have known potential future effects of Obama's statement merely days after it was made. The article does not argue that the use of LGBT became solidified due to (and just days after) Obama's statement.
    – Nuclear Hoagie
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 13:10
  • 10
    I find it odd that this was marked as the accepted answer. It’s certainly an interesting data point, but it doesn’t address the main claim in the question at all (viz., that the shift to L-initial happened because of the AIDS pandemic two decades before Obama’s presidency).
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 14:51
  • 1
    @Avery the internet is a scary place.
    – Captain Giraffe
    Commented Apr 20, 2023 at 0:18
  • 3
    @thelawnet It's hard to say what was first. The 1992 Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations says that "GLB" now means "gay, lesbian, bisexual", replacing the older meaning of Girls Life Brigade and that "LGB" means local governing board (with no mention of a gay meaning). OED says that the August 1985 newsletter Valley Woman's Voice used "L.G.B.", while their earliest example of GLB is not as old as the example in my answer.
    – DavePhD
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 15:51