It's an unfortunate abuse of the English language. The word "gay" has a long history of meaning light-hearted, cheerful and carefree. It's a tragedy to see it degraded by some artificial connection with homosexuality. I could say the same about "faggot" but that's not a word that had great currency in English, so not such a big loss. "Queer" once meant odd or strange. We haven't quite lost that one -- you can still use the word "queer" in this context and be understood by readers.