Joakim Noah Fined $50,000 For Yelling “Faggot”

Chicago Bulls’ center Joakim Noah, who Sunday night yelled, “Fuck you, faggot,” at an unidentified fan — and apologized in record time, just hours later — was fined $50,000 by the NBA, also in record time.

“I apologize,” Noah, the 26 year-​old award-​winning Chicago Bulls basketball player said Sunday night. “The fan said something to me that I thought was disrespectful, and I got caught up in the moment, and I said some things that I shouldn’t have said. I was frustrated and I don’t mean no disrespect to anybody. I just got caught up.”

But let’s also consider this point. “Isn’t it time to crack down on fan behavior?,” asks NBC Sports writer Mike Ventre.

Now, remember, I write about politics and LGBT-related issues, and we really don’t know what the fan said to Noah, so I am in no way minimizing nor condoning Noah’s anti-gay hate speech. It was wrong. It was totally unacceptable. It was wrong. But Ventre may have a point, too.

Just last month, Lakers’ basketball player Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for yelling a similar slur at a referee, after three attempts at apologies and a lot of back-and-forth between the NBA and LGBT organizations.

The NBA should be applauded for its quick action on this. There is no place for homophobia, or homophobic slurs in professional sports — nor anywhere else.

Now is the time to say this. As The New Civil Rights Movement columnist J. Rudy Flesher asked on these pages just this past Friday, “why are sports the ‘last bastion’ or ‘stronghold’ of homophobia?”

“Quick, name all of the out members of Congress. Actually you can do that quite quickly indeed; out of 535 members of both houses, only 4 are out. How about those scores and scores of out Hollywood celebs? Wait, did you draw a blank after Neil Patrick Harris? Yeah, me too. So why are men’s sports teams the focus of our accusations as being a hotbed of homophobia?”

There are over 25 openly gay sports figures who came out this year alone.

All of a sudden, it seems the wide world of sports may be helping to lead us out if the age of homophobia. Wouldn’t that be nice?