Using removed as just a general insult took me a long time to break out of. It was rampant in the 80s and 90s. But it was reflective of what people thought: gay=bad choice. Aids made that even worse

So while using it as a slur for your friends wasn’t gay bashing it was basically saying your friend was as lame as a gay person is, which people looked down on

Thankfully in my mid teens I got the chance to work with gay people and I realized any negative way of thinking or treating them was way off base and ignorant. I was never that bad at all but I had the general unease that people back then had. The. You just realize there’s nothing special about them. Just people being attracted to people