Read me a story, Stella (read me a story, Stella) is an illustrated children's book about two brothers - Stella and Sam - who build a house together for the dog, which is called Fred. The construction of the house is nothing more than an excuse to introduce Sam to the pleasure of reading.
Well, Read me a story, Stella has set off alarms in Alabama libraries as a "sexually explicit" book. Is a children's book about two brothers who build a doghouse sexually explicit? The author's last name, Marie-Louise Gay from Quebec, is to blame. The danger-detecting siren discovered the word Gay in it and, unable to discern that Gay was neither an adjective nor a noun but simply the author's last name, she deemed it necessary to include the book in the Index librorum prohibitorum. Fortunately, they realized it, backed down and saved themselves from further ridicule.
Until the middle of the last century, the word gay (gay in pre-modern spelling) meant cheerful, festive, joyful. But then it happened that, well into the fifties, in English, gay came to mean homosexual. And from English to all languages. Behind this evolution were the gays themselves, who considered that the word homosexual had a medical air. Biel always said: "Don't call me homosexual, that sounds like a medical name".
So suddenly people who called themselves Gay found a new meaning, which in retrograde environments made them the subject of jokes. I don't know if I could have explained any José María Gay de Liébana (QEPD) or which Maria Eugènia Gay. I do know that, in order not to be called "Is Marvin gay?", the singer Marvin Gay jr. he added an e to his last name and became Marvin Gaye. Just in case, his brother Frankie and sister Zeola did the same soon after.
