Me and 'gay bowel syndrome'

Yeah, I know that everyone is talking about last night's Snickers commercial and I have certain opinions on it too.

But forgive me if I focus on something else.

I am moving back the deadline for turning in my manuscript to my publisher until March 1. One reason is a good one. The other reason is interesting.

The good reason being that for the first time in two years, I will be able to take a vacation from my job. Long story, fast ending - I have a week to tie up loose ends and compile my book's index. The vacation begins next week, so naturally I am happy about that.

Now for the very interesting reason and thus the title of my post. Ever since I began my book, I have been trying to find concrete proof that the term "gay bowel syndrome" does not exist. The good news is that in legitimate media sources, I have found very little on it. This is the most complete thing I found:

According to the "Free Online Dictionary and Thesaurus," http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com:

"Gay bowel syndrome was a term first used in 1976 prior to the discovery of AIDS, to describe a series of parasitic disorders caused by oral/anal contact and allegedly related to gay male sexual activity. The term was abandoned by the medical community in the 1980s because the problems that attributed to it were not specific to homosexuals, not confined to just the bowels, nor did it meet the medical definition of a syndrome."

The bad news - a: the term is practically everywhere on anti-gay industry sites and b: my digging in credible medical sources sometimes found me accidentally glancing at interesting, albeit, disgusting images of the human body.

Yet another thing to "thank" the anti-gay industry for.

I also found where the term was stricken from a medical textbook in 2001. But I want to really nail down the fact that the "gay bowel syndrome" is obsolete. In other words, I want more proof . Therefore, in the final weeks before I turn my manuscript in to my publisher, I have to gird my stomach from nausea and keep looking until I find what I need.

So you will forgive me for not focusing on the Snickers commercial. I have a feeling that I won't want food for a while.