Probably the #1 thing I hope to impress on younger gay people is please don't use "gay panic" to mean something positive because it has a very specific extremely negative meaning that a lot of people are going to have an instant reaction to
I keep encountering Gen Zers saying "gay panic" to mean like, having a crush? limerence? and like... yeah yeah linguistic drift is natural but... gay panic has a legal definition that relates to hate crimes and murder so like... let's... not shift that one's meaning?
Yeah, I feel like what I have to clarify to people who aren't familiar: the gay panic defense is a legal defense in murder trials that argues that a straight person experiencing sexual advances from a gay/trans person is so inherently traumatizing that they can't be held legally liable for their actions.
While these days it's less successful than it used to be, there's still plenty of jurisdictions where it hasn't been outlawed - on Wikipedia's list, the most recent case where someone successfully used it to get their charges downgraded was only nine years ago.
So you can see the conflict here - to me, if I see someone saying they/a character is experiencing "gay panic", I don't immediately picture that they have a cute overwhelming crush on someone of the same gender. I think they might be on the verge of committing a hate crime.
