Roy Hibbert, ‘no homo’ and Twitter justice

Let’s get this out of the way at the beginning, “no homo” is a dumb term. It’s not a gay slur really, more so a phrase that plays on homophobia. Nobody with any sense of worth has laughed at it. Ever. Pacers center Roy Hibbert made a mistake Saturday night by saying it and he was fined accordingly. Other NBA players (notably LeBron James and Chris Paul) got away with saying it sans repercussion. But we’ll get to that later.

On Sunday morning, many on social media called for Hibbert’s suspension. One man in particular made it his goal to call out anybody who disagreed with that stance. I happened to be one of them.

Here is our exchange.

A simple disagreement really. But then it turned into this. A tweet sent to all his followers.

Now if you’re reading that without any background, you’d think I was a gay basher. Someone who hated homosexuals. As opposed to someone who simply disagreed with the severity of punishment.

This is just an ugly way of addressing a serious topic on Twitter. The “I’m right, you’re wrong and you hate gay people and LOUD NOISES.”

The NBA should and will discuss post-game comments in the offseason. Especially since “no homo” has been used several times.

They should also address some of the language during games, the repeated use of the ‘n’ word chief among them. These players are adults and despite what many of them think, role models. They need to be held accountable for their words. If suspensions serve as a deterrent for future use of racially, sexually charged language, I’m all for it.

But saying someone’s cool with homophobia because they disagreed? Yea, I’m not for that. It’s akin to this.

I’m not the Twitter police but don’t do that. Don’t go around bullying people for their opinions.

*For what it’s worth, I like Clinton Yates and enjoy his tweets. We just happened to disagree on this issue.