The word is “gay,” the date is Monday, April 7, 1975 and, according to author Joseph C. Goulden in his 1988 book Fit to Print, the speaker is Arthur O. “Punch” Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times. The usually mild-manned Sulzberger was reaming out the paper’s Sunday editor for a story that had run in the Travel section of the preceding day’s paper under the headline, “The All-Gay Cruise: Prejudices and Pride.” The article chronicled a weeklong cruise by some 300 gays and lesbians on the French luxury liner Renaissance. It described a party atmosphere with lawyers, business people, academicians and physicians – of both sexes – dancing to soft drugs and hard rock. There were “leathermen in black cowhide outfits trimmed in chains” and other colorfully attired revelers, including “Lois, a blond ex-showgirl from Miami” who, the article implied, had had a scorching shipboard romance with a young woman dean from an East Coast college.

According to Goulden, Sulzberger laid down the law: The New York Times does not cover “orgies by a bunch of faggots.” Even his mother had called to complain for God’s sake. There would be no more “gay glorification” articles in his newspaper. In fact, he wrote in a memorandum to all staff, the word “gay” was not to be used at all – only “homosexual.” “Above all,” he told one editor, “I do not want another call from my mother on this issue. Understand?”

Understand they did. While Sulzberger was eventually persuaded to permit its use in direct quotes and in reporting the formal names of organizations, it would be another 12 years before the newspaper of record allowed its reporters to use the word “gay” as a designation for homosexual, making it one of the last major newspapers in the country to do so.

Times (no pun intended) and people change, however. Today the Times is considered by many to be a leader in the quality and depth of its coverage of the GLBT community.