I'm not using it in private flippantly or in a derogatory way. My SO and closest friends are black. If you're trying to talk about the word and don't want to use it...you kinda have to use some verbal gymnastics. Imagine if you were a schoolteacher and had a class disruption because one kid went on an abusive tirade calling another student 'faggot'. And then you having to explain what happened to supervisors and parents without using the word 'faggot'. So you start using 'f word' and referring to it as a 'slur' and stuff like that. But when you go home to your wifey....you know it's not necessary to use any substitutions because you're in private and she knows you aren't insensitive to the plights of gay people. I think that's a pretty good comparison.

To be clearer....I don't use the en word in any context in public. However...I do sometimes use it in a report-like context in private.