From where I stand I see it as an issue absolutely identical, in every facet, to using “gay” as a negative insult. I don’t really have an opinion on the banning issue; but I avoid the term because I think it’s not right to use it so.
Yes, but that was before he saw the light - the light revealed to him by reading about George Bush’s head pasted onto a mentally retarded child’s body.
And there are people who find Harry Potter to be some of those things.
Everything Ann Coulter says can fit on that list. Perhaps we should ban mention of her at all? After all, she exists for nothing more than to inflame people with inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful and harassing statements.
Feh. And now you don’t want me to be able to refer to her as retarded.
No thanks.
-Joe, loved the South Park where Cartman tries to win the Special Olympics
None of those, to the best of my knowledge, are used by the medical community to describe and diagnose individuals. Some once were, but they have fallen out of favor, partially because they became stigmatizing rather than descriptive. If a person goes to a doctor and comes back with a diagnosis of MR and they are exposed to the term as a pejorative then it becomes clear they are being referred to as inferior. Using a term which describes a state of being beyond a person’s control as a pejorative puts down the person who fits the description but did nothing to deserve being put down.
Enjoy,
Steven
Look people, the answer is easy: Ban all adjectives! (and I would keep a close eye on those fucking adverbs as well).
Here’s an interesting bit from TAPPED about how this odd story arose:
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/10/index.html#004459
He references an AP story, but the linked article required registration, so I linked you to the blog post in which the AP article is quoted, in part, as follows:
[shrill voice on]
He should have undone it before he didn’t do it!
So if they are, will you change your mind about using them?
I know I’m going to catch hell for saying this but… aren’t they inferior? At least in the relatively narrow area of cognitive abilities? I’m not saying that people who are retarded aren’t people, or aren’t deserving of respect, or equal rights as citizens, or anything like that. But being retarded is a pretty big limitation on what that person can reasonably be expected to achieve. They might be an excellent, dedicated, friendly worker who’s great with customers. But they’re never going to be, say, the Chair of Mathematics at Harvard. Or CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Or (all jokes aside) President of the United States.
I guess my point is that being retarded is always a bad thing. It is never better to be retarded than it is to not be retarded. Insults like “fag,” “nigger,” “kike,” and so forth are taking an attribute of a person that is, at very worst, completely neutral, and painting it as a negative. Calling some retarded is taking something that’s negative, and painting it as… something that’s negative.
I don’t see the problem with that.
What about fire-retardant clothes? I can still wear those, right?
Seriously, people, lighten up.
Keep it as an insult, and also as an exclamation of delight -
“that film was RETARDED good!”
So you also watched Taxi!
What about the nouns? You’ve forgotten the fucking nouns! Are you a…
Never mind. Never mind at all. Go along all, nothing to see here. 
This is exactly how I feel too.
For several years I worked with the mentally retarded (“developmentally disabled” was also used). They were sweet people. I enjoyed many of them more than “normal” people. Really—they get under your skin, seep into your heart. Thinking about some of them makes me smile.
So no, I don’t like the term “retarded,” as in, “RE-tard.” I usually cringe inwardly when I see it used but I wouldn’t say anything (usually) because I know that it’s said out of ignorance. Ignorance. It’s not a neutral term, it’s one that I find negative, but I can’t fight a battle with each person who utters it (out of ignorance). But yes, I do end up with a little lower opinion of those who say it.
By the way, I worked with some patients who were retarded and could read. One guy was quite bright in his own way. He sometimes confronted one of his caretakers and say, “I’m different, aren’t I? I’m retarded, aren’t I? There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?” He was smart enough to know that he wasn’t "normal. I can assure you that he would not be amused by the term “RE-tard.” The knowledge of his mental retadation distressed him at times.
Look—I don’t want the word banned. It never occurred to me that it should be banned. But I wince when I hear it because I don’t think people really think about why it might be hurtful.
The mentally retarded can be the sweetest, coolest people. They can be a joy. I feel priviledged to have known some of them. I can’t imagine them any other way. Sure, it was sad that they aren’t “normal,” can’t have “normal” lives, but they are what they are and it’s not that bad of a thing in some cases. Unless you think being exceptionally sweet, trusting, loving and kind is a bad thing. (I should add here that some of the people I worked with had more “issues,” and some of them were damned difficult. And some had good and bad sides.)
(As an aside, it was rarely the mentally retarded that gave me the most problems—it was the coworkers. Some of them were WHACKED. I mean, seriously WHACKED. Nuts, evil, crazy, toxic people. I don’t miss that job—not because of the patients, but because of the nutty coworkers.)
I cringe when I hear ‘retard’. I’ve only ever heard it through media. I can’t recall ever hearing someone using it in front of me - so I’m suspecting it’s a US-centric thing. Nobody here is diagnosed with any form of retardation. ‘Learning disabilities’, etc are the terms used.
However, the term ‘spastic’ has been dropped entirely, also due to its use as an all-purpose insult.
Is it amusing that ‘coloured’ is no longer acceptable?
Sure, then we can start getting proud about how much more thin the dictionary is getting with each new addition. Doubleplusgood, says I!
Am I the only one to find it ironic that so many gay men are fucking assholes?
And should I add a smiley to that, just to show that I was only joking and thereby remove all possibility of causing offence?
If you think of the word ‘fucking’ as a verb, the above statement is true 
“Colored” used to be the polite term, the equivalent of African-American today. But as generations changed and civil rights advanced, the perfectly acceptable term was associated with the ghastly racial politics of its era, and thus “colored” became verboten and was replaced by “Negro,” which in its time was replaced by “Black,” then “people of color” made a brief resurgence, and now the correct terminology is “African-American,” which in time will be viewed as unacceptably racist and replaced by something else.