I wouldn't want to disappoint you, Tim (so I'm spreading the news)

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people," Tim Hardaway said. "I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Hardaway also said if he did find out that a teammate was gay, he would ask for the player to be removed from the team.

"Something has to give," Hardaway said. "If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that's upset and can't concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it's going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate."

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Later that night, Hardaway apologized during a telephone interview with WSVN-TV in Miami.

"Yes, I regret it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said I hate gay people or anything like that," he said. "That was my mistake."

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I am not surprised. Hateful speech from a homophobic bigot employed and cultivated by the American sports industry.

And Tim....I don't need your vacant, meaningless, insincere, rehearsed (to save your fucking job) UNTRUE forced apology!

As far as I'm concerned....you can take that apology and shove it up your ass.....but, oh...I forgot...you might have to go into a locker room and maybe you might see a gay man in there. Watch out...because all gay men have an uncontrolled, animalistic sexual urge to fuck every straight man we see. Tim, I would of respected you more if you hadn't apologized. At least you would have been honest.

But what can expect from a bigot?

Here are some responses from the GBLT community:

"Hardaway's comments are vile, repulsive, and indicative of the climate of ignorance, hostility and prejudice that continues to pervade sports culture," said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "And by apologizing not for his bigotry, but rather for giving voice to it, he's reminding us that this ugly display is only the tip of a very large iceberg."

Read the GLAAD Press Release

Said Matt Foreman, president of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force: "Hardaway is a hero to thousands of young people. And that's what makes his comments so troubling. Sadly, his words simply put the pervasive homophobia in the NBA on the table."

“There’s a reason why not a single active NBA player has ever come out in the history of the league, and this is it.”
— Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Read the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Statement



What do you think about this?