I first have to explain the term <public> in terms of schooling. In 19th century Britain, all education was as a result of private funding. Private schools were set up and funded by shipbuilders, teachers, Catholics, printers, Jews, you name it….for the benefit of their children and to further their particular doctrine. They were self funded by donation or by union or social funds. Those that could afford to look outwith the confines of such schools could pay to send their children to <public> schools i.e. schools open to all creeds and doctrines where education and not partisan interests came first...so long as you could afford it. Hence, today, we have the misnomer that <public> schools are strictly private, for the rich and the most elite in the land.

In those days, public schooling was only for the rich and only for boys. Schools were cold drafty places. Senior boys had their own rooms and were assigned a junior boy to run their errands including collecting firewood. A bundle of sticks for firewood is called a <faggot> so these junior boys, whose job it was to collect wood and light the fires of the senior boys rooms, became known as <faggots> or <fags>. It was also a verb e.g. <Jones fags for me>…meaning he is my servant. Teenage boys being teenage boys, in all boys boarding schools, (in those days the only girls those boys met were their sisters) had certain needs….. so junior boys assumed (or were forced to assume) <other> duties. And so <fag> became synonymous with boys who bent over to be sodomised.

So now you know….<fag> in gay terms does not mean homosexual in general but bottom in particular and its transition to an insulting term rests mainly with gay men who considered <bottom> to equal <inferior>.