@oristarA,
oristarA wrote:
Why not say "she is a lesbian" since she is a girl? Is lesbian a disparaging term?
If it's a newspaper or magazine article, then the editor maybe worried about the literal length of the article.
Gay being the shorter of the two words, though I guess not as accurate as
lesbian just might be one factor in keeping the article from creeping over into another column.
And no,
lesbian is not a disparaging term.