Those who scrolled through Salon.com’s home page today were “treated” to a ridiculous headline: “When the ‘gayby boom’ came for me.”

If you’re like me, the last time you frequented Salon.com was probably in the late ’90s – early ’00s. Now I realize why I haven’t visited the site in so long: seeing a term was like this in a headline made me equal parts disgusted and sad–and I’m not even a child of a gay couple. If I were, I’d be offended as hell.

As if a parent’s sexual orientation has anything to do with the child? Why would that extend to the kid? You really want to make the kid the butt of a joke like that? ‘Gayby’ sounds like a slur that would be used on the playground to make fun of the child, and not a term a lesbian writer would casually use when discussing whether or not she’s going to have a family.

Perhaps this is a simple case of the editor-gone-wild: the writer submits a story and the editor wants to make it “sizzle” a bit more by creating a pun-y headline? I hope that was the case. But if it was a straight editor, wouldn’t make the term even more offensive?

What’s next? Flippantly re-naming gay marriage “Holy Matri-homo-ny”?

Would love to hear from any same-sex parents: do you find the ‘Gayby’ term offensive? Or is it amusing?