This weekend I went to see the new movie Role Models.

I was excited. Paul Rudd is adorable and has an amazing movie track record and Jane Lynch might be the funniest woman in the world. The theatre was sold out and we were lucky to get seats anywhere near the middle and all the buzz in the theatre made it that much more exciting.

But within five minutes the first faggot joke happened. It was one in a long, long line of homophobic cracks throughout the movie. Every time one of the characters used the word “gay” or talked about being sodomized the entire theater erupted into laughter.

The high school couple three seats down were actually crying from all the hilarity.

The homophobic jokes were so common I have to assume they were purposely put there to make a point. And almost all of the offensive jokes were said by characters other than the two main “role models.” But if it was intended to make a point, I can personally promise that no one in the theater I was in got it.

The truth is that I am fed up with movies and television shows thinking it is ok to use homophobic language to get a laugh. While education programs are trying to teach high school and middle school students that using the word dyke is offensive, Paul Rudd (who co-wrote the movie) has a blockbuster where small children draw pictures of people anally penetrating a robot and anyone weird or different is “gay.”

If the purpose of Role Models was to expose the way we use homophobic language the writers and actors should have taken more care with the execution.

This is the humanity of an entire group of people they are playing with and their work made this viewer want to disappear once the lights came up and the credits rolled.

When I was fourteen, my younger sister, who was and still is eminently cooler than me, taught me a new word: dyke. It basically means anyone who is lame, stupid, aggressive, ugly, the list goes on.

For months I used that word as an insult at least once a day until finally my parents heard me and set both my sister and I straight: a dyke is another word for a lesbian, and people are going to think you’re homophobic if they hear you say it.

The thing is, I still hear the kids I know say that things are “gay” all the time. Many young adults too.

When I point out that it’s homophobic and offensive, not only to me, but likely to other people who overhear it, they laugh or scoff or look at me like I’m an idiot. Those that respond, say, “It doesn’t mean gay gay, just stupid.”

So imagine my cheer at learning that schools are taking on this problem directly. The Ad Council in conjunction with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network has created a series of ads that explain why using the word “gay” as an insult is, well, insulting. The best part is, they’re funny.

Getting kids to change their vocabulary, even when what they are saying could be classified as hate speech, is not easy. And they don’t respond well to authority figures telling them what to do, even in ads that a bunch of adults assume will be effective.

Still, if I’d seen these ads at 14, I would have started watching what I say a bit more.

Hopefully, it will have the same effect on at least some of the next generation.

Check out the videos (there are three of them): “That’s So Gay”