The love that dare not speak its name, according to the Merriam-Webster thesaurus, has many names, including: (adj.) inverted, queer, uranian; (related terms) bisexual, epicene, transvestite, lesbian; (noun) faggot, fruit, homo; (related terms) fairy, nancy, pansy, swish, sapphist, sodomite, pederast.
When Mike Webb, radio personality at KIRO in Seattle, found these entries in the America Online/Merriam-Webster online thesaurus, he went straight into activist mode. A few phone calls and a press release later, Merriam-Webster had issued an apology and AOL had shut down the online thesaurus to remove the entire entry, which will also be removed from future print editions of Merriam-Webster's thesaurus. This merely extends Merriam-Webster's editorial policy concerning race, religion, and ethnicity to include sexual orientation.
Some of the terms are clearly pejorative; others are only antiquated -- for example, uranian, relating to a nineteenth-century English society. But so long as any entry carries with it controversial synonyms and related terms, Webb says he won't be satisfied. With unnerving consistency, he also objects to the thesaurus's entry for the adjective "Christian." Would you believe Merriam-Webster's lists "pious" and "decorous" as synonyms? The nerve.