He's

I want to first and most importantly state that I am a feminist, as much as I can be entitled, but this is only an example from two situations that occurred personally. So, by no means am I unaware of the implications caused by a male-dominated pronoun.

With that said, the first situation occurred at work conversing with a good friend and we were talking about a band, that will go unnamed. It was then bestowed upon me by my good friend that the lead singer was gay, commented as, "You know, he's gay."

The second situation occurred at church conversing with someone, and we were talking about companies and such, and was told about the CEO of one of the companies as, "You know, he's a Christian."

My first instinct in response to both of these are the same, "Oh, yeah," said with mild surprise. The first can be interpreted as homophobic or something along those lines. The second happens constantly with what I feel like as something that should be more a side note than a main point. One descriptive word should not entail us to judge based solely on that one word. What is the point to describe a person by one word than to make that person painted in a better or worse light. One single word should not make me feel all secure knowing that some CEO is a Christian. So what if he's a Christian, so what if he's gay. Does that define him as a person. What I have also noticed is that we, as society, don't use these descriptive words in reference to political standing or leanings. We don't simply state that he is a conservative or a liberal and leave it at that. The focus of the conversation leads easily into the political background of that particular person. Not so with these two descriptive words. I'm always at a dead loss of what to really say when given this description.

Yeah, okay, he's a Christian, does that mean that's he's good, or better than a non-Christian CEO? Does that mean that he'll run his company ethically and morally right? Does a gay artist make me want to no longer listen to that artist or band? Not necessarily, but this is what these descriptive words want us to think, imagine and judge.

Please, if you are going to describe someone with a single descriptive word, I pledge that you hesitate and consider the implications and motivation behind what you intend to mean. Before blurting out, he's so and so, think and put the words behind the description, and not have an unreasonable assumption made with one word.