We are all aware of the stereotypical gay guy who lisps. Some of us are the stereotypical gay guy who lisps. Others of us aren’t but certainly are capable of sounding gay when being campy. Then there are the rest of us who neither lisp naturally or on purpose. We may be gay, but we don’t sound gay. Or so we thought.

A new study by Erik C. Tracy, a cognitive psychologist at Ohio State University, found that for the average listener, the vowel sounds in an unfamiliar voice quickly give away the speaker’s sexual orientation. Researchers asked seven gay and seven straight men to record single-syllable words – such as “mass,” “food” and “sell” – and then played the recordings for listeners. Participants were asked to identify the sexual orientation of the speakers when hearing only the first letter sound of those words, the first two letter sounds, and the entire words.” When hearing the first two letter sounds, listeners were 75% correct in guessing which speakers were gay and which were not. Seems gay guys pronounce vowels differently.

When hearing an unfamiliar voice at the other end of the phone line, for example, most people instantly judge the stranger’s characteristics based on how they speak. The new study suggests listeners are usually pretty accurate in their determination. “I’m not sure what exactly the listeners are responding to in the vowel,” Tracy said in a news release from the American Institute of Physics. “Other researchers have done various acoustic analyses to understand why gay and heterosexual men produce vowels differently. Whatever this difference is, it seems that listeners are using it to determine the speaker’s sexual orientation.”

The listeners were unable to determine the sexual orientation after hearing the sound of the first letter in the spoken word, for example, just the “m” sound in the word “mass.” But, when presented with the first two letter sounds – for example “ma” – listeners were right 3/4 of the time.

This news may cause some concern among closeted gay men who thought that by being careful not to hum show tunes they had everyone fooled. Seems that doesn’t work; there’s still that nasty speech problem. Unless you live in Tennessee. You will not have to worry that someone will know you are gay when you say the word gay there, because lawmakers recently decided to make saying gay illegal.

Known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill, the legislation forbids discussion of homosexuality in classrooms by exclusively limiting instructions and materials to ‘age-appropriate natural human reproduction science’. Republican Senate sponsor Stacey Campfield of Knoxville says “homosexuals don’t naturally reproduce,” thereby defining the purpose of the law. Thanks to celebrities like Sir Elton, Republicans can no longer argue that gay folk don’t reproduce. We just don’t do it naturally.

More American’s would be outraged over the bill, but, well, it’s Tennessee, the state that provided the setting for the famous Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial that pitted the state against an educator for teaching evolution in public school. The folks in Tennessee have always been protective of what their young can learn in school, preferring to ensure they remain dumb and barefooted. Tennessee is one of the leading states in teenage pregnancies and in sexually transmitted infections. By law, abstinence must be taught in school, and Tennessee has the lowest high school graduation rate in the country. 15 % of the state’s population lives below the poverty level, and inbreeding is a way of life in this southern state. An old joke that sums up the way of life in Tennessee:

How do you know when your trailer is level in Tennessee?

When you come home from picking up your welfare check and there is cum dribbling down both sides of your six-year-old niece’s mouth.

Of course if you can’t say gay in Tennessee, you most certainly can not marry your same-sex partner there either. But you can wed your first cousin. Priorities people! But then Tennessee isn’t the only state in the union that favors inbreeding over same-sex marriages:

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