TWEET DECK

Cleveland Browns Linebacker Tweets F-Bomb Doesn’t “Agree” With Being Gay

Just when you thought the NFL was becoming a kinder, gentler organization, Cleveland Browns linebacker Tank Carder reminds you it’s hard to change a jock’s strap.

After the purportedly comical “Because I’m a Guy” handle tweeted a “joke” about betraying teammates in a video game, Carder, having missed the point of said “joke,” responded accordingly:

“Unfollowed…your [sic] a faggot for that.”

He has since deleted the tweet (because that always works) but the damage had been done and Carder was taken to task for his indelicate language, to which he responded accordingly:

“I don’t agree with being gay or lesbian at all, but saying faggot doesn’t make me a homophobe, it’s just a word”

Well, you can’t argue with that logic (unless you’re the Associated Press), though some people apparently did, leading Carder to issue this half-hearted “apology”:

“If I offended anyone in anyway, I do apologize, thought the guy was bashing team sports, big misunderstanding”

Well, so long as it’s in the name of defending team sports, use “faggot” as often as you like, Tank Carder. Perhaps realizing, or being helped to realize, that an apology means you’re actually sorry for something, Carder took another pass at it:

“I want to sincerely apologize for the word I used! I did not in anyway mean to offend anyone! That tweet doesn’t define me as a person!”

The exclamation points really drive it home…or at last to the corner, since Carder issued another apology hours later:

“I was not bashing the gay community in any way…if you knew me you would know I wouldn’t do that. Again I’m sorry if you were offended”

Okay, so he apologized – several times – but Outsports is still calling for at least a one-game suspension as punishment (Yunel Ecobar was suspended for three games after writing a gay slur in Spanish on his eye black back in September).

However, Tank Carder’s blatant ignorance only proves that the NFL and other professional athletic organizations need to make more of an effort to educate and inform players on how not to be assholes in public.

GLAAD, Athlete Ally and You Can Play provide this kind of training, which would help to avoid any further embarrassing, and just plain stupid, gaffes like this in the future.

Then again, for someone who doesn’t “agree” with being gay, there’s probably a lot of stupidity not-too-far down the road.

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