"God Can Change Gays," says former Kentucky governor Julian Carroll.

My first reaction upon seeing this story on Twitter (below) was incredulity: How could it be that Julian Carroll is still alive?

(He's 85).

And he's a state senator in Kentucky?

And he's a DEMOCRAT?

If you don't already follow Jacob Payne on Twitter, I recommend doing so. Hoosiers have precious little room to laugh, if any, but some of the political tidings in the Commonwealth are breathtaking, and Jake covers them all. Scroll back a few days, and he has much of interest to say about Carroll's (shall we say self-serving) remarks.

God Can Change Gays, Says Former Kentucky Governor & Current State Senator (The River City News)

It was a story about how being gay in a Kentucky campaign was a surprising non-issue.

Jim Gray, the Lexington mayor who is the Democratic Party's nominee to face incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul in November, is openly gay.

"Does anybody care?," asked the headline in Roll Call, the DC-based political newspaper ...

 ... The part about Gray's allies who may still believe that being gay is a choice seems to point to former governor Julian Carroll, now a state senator representing Frankfort. Carroll, a Democrat, is quoted towards the end of the lengthy profile published Monday. Here's what Roll Call included from the Democratic Minority Whip ...

“These shifts always reflect a change in sensibility.”

Sometimes it slips away from us, especially in a place where sensibility seemingly went to die, but words and ideas matter.

The Decline and Fall of the ‘H’ Word; For Manys Gays and Lesbians, the Term ‘Homosexual’ is Flinch-Worthy, by Jeremy W. Peters (NYT)

To most ears, it probably sounds inoffensive. A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual.

But that five-syllable word has never been more loaded, more deliberately used and, to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative ...