That's so gay..

With all the recent coverage of a-certain-tv-star-calling calling a certain co-star a faggot (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16696521/); it got me thinking..

I've often heard other gays claim that by using the word "faggot" among themselves "weakens" the word and "makes it our own."
I don't think it does. If it did, anyone could say "faggot" and all of us gays would just sit and laugh .
I think a word like faggot has two parts:
1.) In one instance, yes, if another gay person (or any person) used the term faggot to describe me it would accurate in the sense that faggot denotes a gay person. In this way, such epithets can actually be accurately descriptive, because they denote a certain quality that is true of a person (like sexuality, skin tone, religion, etc.)
2.) However a term like faggot is also used to denote some extra quality that doesn't just simply note some true quality about something, it also denotes that quality is less then human.In this sense, I don't think any word like "faggot" should be used, even by other gay folks, ever. If I call another gay person "faggot" it's still like dehumanizing them; and that goes for any epithet.

Although, I think word-reclaimation can work; there are certain words that always have a certain connotation. Speech that we may never "reclaim".