Blog

Is This Question Intolerant?

I already wrote humorously on Jason Collins and the black jockey in the Kentucky Derby this week, as well as a humble-braggish post yesterday about the week I am having, but after listening and reading to a ton of coverage of the Jason Collins story (the pro basketball player who came out as gay this week, if you have been living under a rock or camping out for good seats to Iron Man 3) I realized that I have not heard a question/answer that I am curious about: what would be wrong with a heterosexual athlete not wanting to shower and be naked with a gay man?  Now on its face this might seem like a bigoted question, but in the same context I would ask why is that men and women have different locker rooms?

I raise that because the argument always goes to the extreme right away after a question like that, like by suggesting a heterosexual man might be uncomfortable with a gay man seeing him naked you are suggesting that the gay man is some sort of uncontrolled beast who will begin getting aroused or will initiate sexual contact.  Is this why women and men have separate locker rooms at gyms and at colleges?  Because there is an implicit understanding that without that barrier men will simply begin to masturbate, flirt and perhaps sexually assault nude women in their presence?  I don’t think so.  I think there is just a desire for a sexuality-free zone in what is otherwise a very intimate setting and I am not sure why it would be wrong, even if impossible to implement, for a heterosexual athlete to want the same feeling around same-sex teammates.

And put this in the context of pro sports.  These are men who are physical specimens – the most well built and physically fit humans on the planet in American professional sports.  They are exaggerations of masculinity when compared to the general population.  So it is no shame that a gay man would find this appealing.  This, in no way, is suggesting some lack of control on the part of Jason Collins or other gay athletes.  But from the perspective of the heterosexual athlete, why is automatically a hateful point to be raised that someone does not want to shower with people that are sexually attracted to them (or could conceivably be), for whom they do not reciprocate?  I am not endorsing this point of view, but I am endorsing it as a somewhat reasonable feeling that some athletes might have and it should not immediately render them a pariah in the enlightened avenues of modern society.

Now, unfortunately, many professional athletes are not articulate or intelligent enough to convey what might be a more nuanced discomfort with having a gay teammate.  And some are outright homophobes and bigots (or uncomfortable with their own sexuality).  And on the other side of the spectrum are erudite athletes who either have no problem with it or are too smart to say that they have any issue with it.  But there is no doubt in my mind that if an athlete tweeted “I have no problem with a gay teammate, but I don’t feel like being naked around him.”  he would be bashed, criticized and called ignorant, stupid, a homophobe and a lot of other things while  his team and league would have to apologize for him.  But why is that a completely unreasonable position or feeling?

My basic question is why does fully accepting people of different sexual orientations have to mean that you must be 100% comfortable with their orientation in the most personal moments of your own life?  I only raise this because I would be much more interested in hearing a debate on this more specific question than the usual “are you okay with a gay teammate” or “do you have a problem with gay people” generic questions.  Now it already appears that many teammates of Collins (and other closeted gay athletes) have no issue with this.  And that is great.  But I don’t think a different viewpoint on this somewhat specific question is as pernicious as I am sure social media would treat it.

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Blog

The F Word

I would admittedly never pass up an opportunity to say something bad about Kobe Bryant, and his usage of the word “faggot,” which was caught on camera during a Tuesday night basketball game gave me a good opportunity.   It was a heated moment for Bryant who had received a foul call and speaking about a referee said “Fucking faggot.”  On a somewhat related note, Nick DiPaolo once said, “Any white guy who claims to have never said nigger is either lying or never bet $1000 on an NBA game.”  So passion and poor words are not a novel connection in sports or comedy.  In response to the incident Bryant said:

“What I said last night should not be taken literally.  My actions were out of frustration during the heat of the game, period.  The words expressed do NOT reflect my feelings towards the gay and lesbian communities and were NOT meant to offend anyone.”

Like many a rapper and athlete before him, the common defense was, “I did not mean gay people or to offend gay people.”  But how is that any different than using the word nigger to describe someone’s conduct or appearance or using Jew as a verb to describe someone’s thrifty actions and then claiming that you were not trying to disparage those particular groups of people.  The word faggot is a word of hate.  Even if it is not used to describe a gay person, it is used as an insult because the connotation it carries is that you are less of a person because of what the word references.  Just because we have been comfortable with a particular piece of hate speech does not mean it should be allowed in regular conversation under some sort of grandfathered-in homophobia.  Even Chris Rock, my favorite comedian of all-time, failed on his last HBO special, in my opinion, to make a joke validating the usage of the w
But in our society, there is not the widespread guilt and shame over the word “faggot” as there is with “nigger.”  Therefore, defenses of the F word are what I imagine a defense of the N word would sound like in 1880 or 1960.
My stance on gay rights in this country is simple and has two basic parts.  I don’t believe any institution should be required to accept or acknowledge or conduct gay marriage, except for the government.  In my opinion, the government has no place in marriage.  If I ever get married I want it to be in a Catholic Church and that is where the value for it will be for me, not from a state certificate or tax forms.  BUT if the government feels that certain rights and privileges should be accorded to married people then it is completely absurd to exclude people from that.
Secondly, people may have the Constitutional right to say hurtful, ignorant and insulting things, but we should not tolerate it.  Our society’s general acceptance of the usage of the words “gay” or “fag” and “faggot” is deplorable.  Glee and Modern Family may have people “loving” gays (the same way music and sports have America “loving” black people), but we are still too lenient when it comes to condemning this hate speech.  In fifty years I may have views that make seem like some sort of closed-minded bigot, but fairness from the government and from fellow human beings doesn’t seem to be too much of a leap, except that it still is.  I think the NBA was right to fine Kobe because it was an embarrassing thing to have been observed.  And to those that may say, “Hey, lots of people say hurtful things and don’t get ostracized for it”  that is the price you pay for getting $20 million a year to play a game for your job.
I remember nine years ago getting into a pretty heated discussion with friends of mine.  We were watching a movie and one of my friends called someone a “fag” (for doing something like eating a certain type of sandwich or something mundane like that (and it was not a penis sandwich).  I then made a pretty strong point (thanks in part to Williams College – where I entered as someone who would occasionally use the word “fag” or “gay” to describe things, but left finding those words detestable.) that the word was hateful and I did not want to hear it.  The two responses from my friends were to ask “what the fuck had I learned up at Williams?” and “Was I gay?”  I would never make the claim to be mature, but hopefully at this point my friends have caught up to me at least on this point.  You needn’t be gay or a bleeding-heart liberal to defend decency towards gays.
Kobe would have done better to issue the following statement: “I apologize for the hurtful slur I used.  There is no place in decent society for that word or the sentiments it evokes.  I did not mean to offfend anyone, but I know that even the mere utterance is hateful, even if not said with any literal intention.”
Besides, with the amount of jewelery, fashion-obsession and dougie dancing in the NBA, Kobe may have offended deeply more of his peers than he realizes.