Back in February former Miami Heat point guard Tim Hardaway caused a great deal of controversy when asked on a local sports radio talk show program what he thought of the coming out of John Amaechi, important to note here that a former basketball player was invited to talk about sports on a sports radio station.

Tim Hardaway gave his personal opinion, that he does not like homosexuals. That's when all the whining began. "How could he have used a public forum to spread this hate speech," some demanded to know (completely ignoring the fact that Mr. Hardaway never advocated beating of homosexuals). Apparently, it's okay to march through the streets of a city where the majority of the residents are Jewish and a great many of them Holocaust survivors while insisting on the ideology of National Socialism; it's okay to deny the existence of the Holocaust in any and all academic pursuits and blame it all on some Zionist conspiracy or another; it's okay to hope for the assassination of the President and Vice President of the United States; it's even okay to call non-liberals (mostly conservatives, but on occasion libertarians as well) evil and even deny their humanity; but to say that one disapproves of homosexuality, that just goes against any and all acceptable norms of discourse. In fact, none of the tirades against Tim Hardaway stopped, even after he apologized. The tirades, of course, keep coming from those that insist that one can get away with anything as long as one apologizes for it, whether it's obstruction of justice, perjury, or even something as trivial as the destruction of national security documents.

I am in no way advocating greater speech codes (which just infringe on the right to free speech). Rather, I am trying to show that over all the things to show indignation over, Tim Hardaway's comment does not approach the vitriol approached by those that preach racial superiority or political assassinations.