Political correctness is on the march again in the Washington Post sports section. In a column highlighted on the Post home page today with the headline "Sexuality Disclosed, Ignorance Exposed," sports writer Michael Wilbon uses former NBA player John Amaechi's coming out as gay as an opportunity to bludgeon the "ignorance" of anyone who would offer a discouraging word.
If we're lucky, the men and women who are both enlightened and emboldened will not only be supportive but will drown out the knuckleheads and Neanderthals and everybody who wants to slow the march of progress. Even one step away from tolerance, whether we're talking about race, gender, religious beliefs or sexuality, simply slows the march to the day when none of this stuff matters.
Wilbon doesn't seem to understand that he's showing no tolerance for many people's religious beliefs when he equates opposition to homosexuality with ignorance.
By the way, Amaechi's new book, Man in the Middle, is being published by ESPN Books, so Wilbon won't be having any "ignorance" issues with his ESPN bosses.
In the Detroit Free Press, Michael Rosenberg compares a hypothetical gay player with Kobe Bryant, who played a season accused of rape, and asked: "If that is how it works for an accused sex offender, why can't it work that way for a gay man?" Rosenberg does make a good point about the NBA and religion: "There are a lot of lifestyles in the NBA that don't jibe with any religion I'm aware of, unless you count hedonism, and I don't hear much complaining."
