Yesterday, I blogged that I wanted to see Tracy Morgan and Joakim Noah visit drop-in centers and halfway houses for LGBT youth. Both men have recently apologized for having offended the LGBT community. Noah called a fan “fa****” and Morgan described what he’d do if he had a gay son. Noah was fined $50,000 and Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for a similar offense.
After paying that fine, Noah said, “I made a mistake, learn from it and move on. That’s about it.”
I mused that I wondered how much he could learn from paying a fine that doesn’t go to helping gay youth. I said I’d rather see him use his time and effort to make a human connection with the kids who have to leave their homes because their families cannot accept that they’re gay.
It seems Tracy Morgan will indeed do just that. He will team with GLAAD and meet with residents of New York’s Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and support to homeless LGBT youth and families who have lost children to anti-gay violence. Additionally, Morgan will travel to Nashville, where Morgan will apologize to the audience he offended.
In a statement through GLAAD, Morgan said:
“I know how bad bullying can hurt. I was bullied when I was a kid. I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. I never want to use my comedy to hurt anyone… My family knew what it was like to feel different. My brother was disabled, and I lost my father to AIDS in 1987. My dad wasn’t gay but I also learned about homophobia then because of how people treated people who were sick with that.”
To me, this is what “it gets better” could and should look like. I don’t want Joakim Noah’s $50,000 or Kobe’s $100,000 if those are just symbolic fines. I’d rather have them see the power of their words.
You might say, “Pat, why are you harping on this?” Because I’ve heard strangers call me “fa****.” Because I’ve heard people say gay slurs “in the heat of the moment” when they were looking for a synonym for “asshole” or “idiot.” I know what it’s like to know that there are some places that are safer for me than others. And until Noah makes an effort to show that he knows this is wrong and hurtful, I can’t help but think he’s ashamed he got caught and not feeling guilty because he did something wrong. I guess that shouldn’t matter, but as someone who has been called a fa**** by strangers, I think I still strive for a world where someone is not calling me that because they think it’s wrong, rather than a world where someone would want to call me that but won’t because they’d get called out for it.
Another way to look at it: When Joakim Noah got mad at that fan and called him a slur, he called him “fa****.” Why? Because the guy was doing something stereotypically gay? No, because the guy was doing something he didn’t like. That’s it. But why “fa****” and not the N word or a word for a religious group? Because he knows those words are offensive and he probably knows people who fit in those minority groups.
I think until more people know people who are gay, gay slurs will seem acceptable to them to use in “the heat of the moment” in ways that the N word or other words are not acceptable.
Joakim Noah said he paid his fine and “that’s about it, let’s move on.” Tracy Morgan, on the other hand, is allowing this to transform him and he’s reacting with humility and graciousness. He made a mistake, but he’s not being cavalier in his response. That these guys made a mistake didn’t bother me as much as the flippant “let’s move on” response. That goes for Tim Hardaway, too,
whose remarks were way worse than Joakim Noah’s. Sometimes the way you handle your mistake can be more offensive than the initial mistake.
But in the case of Tracy Morgan, the steps he’s taking show that he seems to know the gravity of his words. I hope that Tracy Morgan can eventually be viewed as a champion of gay rights who came to the cause after realizing his mistakes. That would mean a lot more to me than Joakim Noah paying a fine and trying to forget it and “move on.”
