Death of Bruce Rodgers

The gay lexicon "The Queens Vernacular," has achieved wide circulation and citation. It has the distinction of being the largest such dictionary of gay terms, far surpassing in number of entries my own "Homolexis." However, the Rodgers work uncritically combines authentic liinguistic material, items that have enjoyed a wide circulation, with one-off bon mots coined by particular queens, some of them probaly the author's friends.

At all events, here is the obituary from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bruce G. Rodgers 66, of Santa Clara, linguist, author, and scholar, died
Aug. 10, 2009, from complications of Parkinson's Disease. Born Oct. 15,
1942, in Wisconsin, he moved to San Francisco in 1966. In 1972, he authored
"The Queens' Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon," cited by scholars as one of the
first serious dictionaries of gay slang in English and the definitive gay
American jargon resource. Bruce is survived by his sister, Deborah Millett,
and brother-in-law, Malcolm Vuksich, of Las Vegas, NV. He was preceded in
death by his parents, Sylvester and Nancy Rodgers; and his partner Joe
Jenkins. He leaves behind a legacy of research and scholarship. His papers
will be donated to the GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco, and others,
for historical preservation, education and research. Bruce was laid to rest
in the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery. Services were private.