Sports-minded homo LZ Granderson found himself on the receiving end of some anti-gay hits at last week’s NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans. While he wasn’t seriously hurt, the incident spurred Granderson to speak out against a seemingly apathetic sports world, particularly with relation to this month’s Brady Quinn scandal. Writes Granderson:
As long as we as a culture continue to make incidents like the one involving Quinn a news brief, then we as a culture will continue to give credence to the barbaric caste system that has led to several violent attacks and even deaths of people just because they are gay. Contrary to the mistaken notion that brings us comfort, this branch of hate crimes didn’t stop once the nation eulogized Shepard. Some of us just stopped paying attention.
That’s certainly a possibility, but our cynical selves suspect some of ’em just don’t care.
Maverick69
What a hot picture.
It’s one of the reasons I love the Yankees.
There always seems to be some man on man action in that clubhouse.
What I would give to be a towel in their lockeroom.
Eminent Victorian
MANY of them really don’t care; they suffer very few if any consequences because the insidious homoprejudice in college and pro sports gets little attention in sports journalism. Fan behavior toward athletes is similarly homoprejudice/ homophobic, especially in college basketball of late (witness recent events at the U of Oregon). My brother writes for Sports Illustrated and is finishing up a piece about terrible fan behavior at sporting events that includes an examination of homophobic taunts. My hope is that the magazine will allow for more in-depth pieces on rampant homophobia in pro sports, but it’s tricky for them as some teams and coaches (and owners), hating the scrutiny, then try, and often succeed, at getting journalists banned from access to teams.