As anyone who has been watching sports news knows Joakim Noah yelled a gay slur at a fan yesterday. He has since apologized and been fined $50,000 by the NBA.
I am sure that some will argue that Noah’s fine should have been larger since Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for yelling a gay slur at the ref. Honestly, I am not sure a larger fine would change anything or deter this in the future. Another interesting thing is when compared to percent of salary Noah’s fine was 4 times larger than Kobe Bryant’s fine.
As bad as all of these gay slurs have been lately with Kobe Bryant and Joakim Noah in basketball, and Roger McDowell in baseball, I honestly think catching them on camera and the publicity has been a good thing. It has raised the conversation of gay athletes in sports, the reaction has sent a message that using gay slurs is not acceptable, and it has generally raised awareness of the issues.
This recent publicity has caused several people affiliated with the sports world to come out, including Rick Welts of the Phoenix Suns and Jared Max of ESPN radio. Obviously there are still a lot of sports people choosing to remain in the closet, and I respect that decision. However, the more of them that make the decision to come out the less homophobic professional athletes will be and the more faces of gay people that politicians will see when voting for discrimination.