LGBTQ Q for queer. Isn't that the same as "gay"?

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A "queen" is an obviously effeminate gay male.

A "queer" used to apply to all homosexual males in the old days; stereotypically, homosexual males were effeminate, and spoke with a "gay lisp."

I seriously doubt that Carey Grant singlehandedly introduced the term to American society. Especially since it was a secret code that he would only have used in private, and never used it that way on screen, or in public. He never went public with his homosexuality AFAIK.

And folks did not start using the term until long after Carey Grants height of fame in the Fifties.

But it might have been an underground code that was already current among gay guys of his time, and that was where he got it from.

A generation later in the early Seventies when homosexuals came out of the closet asserted their rights they may have latched on to the pre existing code term and repurposed it as a public label for themselves then.

I always assumed that as "queer", deriving from meaning odd, could be a catch all term of things related to the rest of the acronym in deviating from the "normal", but may not be so easily categorized. Especially since many consider things like gender and sexuality to be on a sliding scale, in a similar way that autism can be. I have otherwise seen a "+" added to instead expand it past, and an "I" to include "intersex" as a medical condition different enough from trans.

They don't have an A for Asexual, or "Ace". Go figure.

... or an "S" for "Straight" ... that seems kinda sexist to me.