| Source | Year | Position |
|---|---|---|
| SumOfUs | 2016 | Avoid |
| SEIU | 2020 | Avoid |
| American Psychological Association | 2023 | Avoid |
| Diversity Style Guide | 2023 | Use with care |
| NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists | 2025 | Avoid |
“Avoid defaulting to umbrella terms like gay or homosexual. Use LGBTQ to refer to a broad community or be specific when relevant: lesbian, gay man, bisexual woman, etc.”
SumOfUs steers writers away from homosexual as a default descriptor, preferring either the broad LGBTQ umbrella or a specific identity term. Its avoided-terms list names homosexual outright.
“gay people [not homosexual (adj.) or homosexual(s) (n.)].”
SEIU prescribes gay people as the correct form and rejects homosexual as both an adjective and a noun. The preferred/avoided pairing lives under gay; the rejection applies to homosexual.
“The term “homosexual” is outdated and should not be used to describe a person’s sexual orientation.”
The APA directs writers to use sexual orientation language and explicitly flags homosexual as a dated clinical term that should not be applied to a person's orientation.
“As a noun, a person who is attracted to members of the same sex. As an adjective, of or relating to sexual and affectional attraction to a member of the same sex. Use only in medical contexts or in reference to sexual activity. For other usages, see gay, lesbian.”
The Diversity Style Guide confines homosexual to medical contexts or references to sexual activity, directing writers to gay or lesbian for other usages.
“Avoid the obsolete term homosexual to refer to people. Homosexuality is acceptable when a noun is needed for the concept of same-sex attraction. The terms may be most useful when writing about scientific research that uses the terminology to describe sexual activity.”
NLGJA tells journalists not to use homosexual for people but allows homosexuality for the abstract concept of same-sex attraction, noting both terms suit scientific writing about sexual activity.
Avoid for people; the narrow exception is clinical. Four of the five sources reject “homosexual” as a way to describe a person. SEIU’s stylebook pairs it directly with its replacement (“gay people, not homosexual”), the APA calls the term dated and bars it for describing a person’s sexual orientation, NLGJA labels it obsolete for people, and SumOfUs sends writers to either the LGBTQ umbrella or a specific identity term. The reasoning is consistent across the corpus. The word originated as a 19th-century clinical category, carried decades in which same-sex attraction was classified as pathology, and was later favored by opponents of gay rights for its clinical coldness.
The page is not a flat unanimous avoid because the journalism-side sources spell out a carve-out. The Diversity Style Guide allows the term “only in medical contexts or in reference to sexual activity,” and NLGJA accepts “homosexuality” as a noun for the abstract concept of same-sex attraction, particularly when covering scientific research that uses the terminology. Both draw the same line: the adjective applied to people is out; the technical term for a concept, inside technical writing, survives.
The replacements are the everyday identity terms: gay, lesbian, or, for breadth, LGBTQ+. Each has its own page in this chapter.