Xbox Live Now Allows 'Gay' and Other Orientation Terms in Gamertags, Online Profiles

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Four months after allowing Rockstar to launch "The Ballad of Gay Tony" (a downloadable add-on for Grand Theft Auto IV) on Xbox 360, Microsoft has tweaked the "Code of Conduct" for its online Xbox Live service so that users can incorporate terms of "relationship orientation," such as "gay," into their online handles and profiles.

"You may use the following terms to express your relationship orientation in your profile or Gamertag: Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Straight," the revision declares.

Under the old policy, use of such phrasing was considered "offensive" and resulted in said accounts being banned from Xbox Live--notable examples include "theGAYERgamer" and "RichardGaywood", the latter being someone's actual legal name--with the ensuing controversy sparking an apology and the eventual change.

"Special thanks to GLAAD [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] and Microsoft's LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender] community for guidance on the terms," Xbox Live policy director Stephen Toulouse wrote on Twitter alongside word of the revision, adding "If you try typing in any of the the approved terms into your profile, you should find they are not blocked...[but] we're still sweeping the system for variations of the words so it might not be for a few days that all spellings, phrases, etc are done."

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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    March 5, 2010 8:27 AM

    This is gonna end badly, i highly doubt 13 to 29 year old halo fanboys respect sexual orientation. Then again i highly doubt people with the actual described sexual orientations will apply these tags to their profile. Though those same fan boys might switch their tags to "gay" cause its a hilarious joke thats never been done before. So these individuals will be able to hide within these fanboy groups, talk about keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

    I understand what they wanted to accomplish but the gamer community is just a very harsh place for people of sexual orientation differing form the norm, although on paper this accomplishes acknowledgement , and keeps M$ out of lawsuit territory. What really needs to be done is to teach our youth respect of others no matter orientation at school and at home.

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      March 5, 2010 8:33 AM

      Yeah, still not going to stop people from using "gay" as a slur online.

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        March 5, 2010 8:38 AM

        that's gay

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          March 5, 2010 9:20 AM

          You shut your smelly transgender lesbian mouth when straight men talk.

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      March 5, 2010 8:45 AM

      The "gamer" community, or the homophobic and intolerant community?

      Let people add these things to their profile, it is part of who they are anyway, and eventually people will learn that a gay gamer can shoot you in the face just as well as a straight one, and the only difference is the slur you scream into the mic. when you die.

      As for people like "The GAYER gamer" - they just seem to be giving XBL users ammo.

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        March 5, 2010 8:54 AM

        Sorry i should of said the gamer community has a large percentage of homophobia, and intolerance.

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        March 5, 2010 10:35 AM

        You put "gay gamer" and "shoot you in the face" together in a sentence without any apparent sense of irony or even a parenthetical lol.

        Well done. :)

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      March 5, 2010 1:28 PM

      Funny you mention that because, I just told my cousin playing MW2 with his clan... They all just changed their clan tag to iGay.... lol

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