More about gay and GLBTQ

About gay: I've always heard that, in the old days, before homosexuality was openly accepted, "gay" was a code word men could use in bars to let each other know they were homosexuals. One would say, "I'm feeling gay, what about you?" It was an innocuous word at the time. If the other said, "I'm feeling gay, too," then they knew.

I have a question about use of the word "queer" recently. We've used G,L,B,T (gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans-sexual) for a while now. This year's Durango Independent Film Festival had a category for G,L,B,T,Q, adding that Q stood for "queer." And one of the big New York film festivals had a category they just called Queer. Is this an effort to reclaim a word that has previously been disparaging, much as the word "black" was reclaimed by African-Americans in the 60's? Or is it a whole other category that I don't know about?

Thanks for reading!