Yeah, people made the same arguments about 'gay' and 'fag'.

Retarded was the word of choice medically in the 60's - 80's for people with developmental disabilities. It derives from the Latin word Tardus which means slow or late.

Languages evolve, but the euphemistic treadmill is ongoing. The word 'cretin' derived from the word 'Christian', the person who coined it intended it to mean that people with cognitive impairments were still people worthy of respect. And now it's just a straight up insult. Similar with 'idiot' and 'moron'.

And these days you can look at wojaks which use physical differences like drooling or missing half a head or being physically unattractive in unconventional ways to indicate ignorance or stupidity.

Every word that people use to try to describe people with disabilities respectfully becomes a slur. That's because of ableism. It's just not talked about much.

More on this topic for anyone interested in the euphemism treadmill: https://humanparts.medium.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-mentally-retarded-e3b9eea23018

Same, even now I've been making an effort not to for years, it still sometimes pops up in my internal monologue. Over-writing preprogrammed habits is hard, I am right there with you.

Lame is kind of an old word for someone or something with a bad leg or legs.

Like how a horse is lame if its leg is broken.

Technically yes but I'm disabled and it's literally never seemed ableist to me. I've never heard anyone use it as anything other than "that's a bummer" or "you're ruining the vibe"

I think that specific word has been reformed

You can pry “lame” and “spaz” outta my cold, dead tongue!

I think it's partly a symptom of our world being super-connected. There are some loud people out there with some really poorly founded ideas, and opinions which most people would consider absurd. Previously that might be only one or two people in a community, but the internet has changed that for good.

I also try not to do it anymore to help people with disabilities which prevent them from readily picking up on sarcasm like autism. I don't need to accidentally influence someone who has taken me at face value. It's so hard not to revert back to old habits though.

Cringe seem to have become popular to describe all kinds of annoying, uncomfortable, or awkward things lately. Maybe use that instead since the other two uses of gay were pretty well established when people started using it as the third definition.

Cringe?