School Bus Driver Charged In Anti-Gay Assault

How much farther does it have to go before society realizes it's gone too far? An adult being fired from his job and criminally charged for taunting a 10 year old boy with the word "gay"...I feel like crying, not only when I think of what that poor child must have gone through, but when I think that I live in a world where something like this could happen to a child. No, happen to children, because the boy that got chased isn't the only one who has been scarred by this. The children that were encouraged by the driver (yes, he was a SCHOOL BUS DRIVER!) to chase the boy; can you imagine what this has done to their minds? At 10 years old, most kids have not yet learned that adults make mistakes; that not all adults should be listened to. They are still at the age of "Well, a grown up said it so it must be right." How confusing it must be for them now, knowing that a grown up told them to do this, but now that grown up is going to jail (hopefully) for it.

Society needs to stop equating the word "gay" with something terrible. The dictionary meaning for the word "gay" is:
gay /geɪ/ adjective, -er, -est, noun, adverb –adjective
1. having or showing a merry, lively mood: gay spirits; gay music.
2. bright or showy: gay colors; gay ornaments.
3. given to or abounding in social or other pleasures: a gay social season.
from gay. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 17, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gay

There is no definition in there for "something horrible to be destroyed", at least not the last time I looked. (although there is now one I didn't know about:
5. homosexual.
6. of, indicating, or supporting homosexual interests or issues: a gay organization.
–noun
7. a homosexual person, esp. a male.
Number 7 leads me to question why is it "especially a male", but that opens a whole nother can of worms that I'm not going to go into right now, that's for another post)

The word gay has always represented something happy; how did we end up in a world where an adult male is so threatened by it that he would attack a 10 year old child over it, and use other children to do his dirty work?