>I became the "don't say gay kid" at school after that

Making a point of trying to shame other people for using words you don’t like is a losing game in the long run.

The “actions have consequences” argument is what lead us to where we are now where you can see an obvious backlash.

Heck the papa John’s pizza guy got fired for using a magic word in an obviously non-derogatory way, and it was the same “actions have consequences” mentality even though basically nobody would be genuinely offended by his usage of it.

If you continue to make a big deal out of every usage of gay and retarded those words will only grow in power and popularity because you are showing someone that they have the power to get you to freak out if they use them.

You can see the opposite effect with traditional swear words, which are so used in popular media that they have lost almost all of their power.