As soon as I heard about Tim Hardaway's comments about gay people, I immediatly knew that brother was in for hell in a handbasket. While we do have the right to free speech in the U.S., this is a country that is bricked and mortored on concepts of tolerance and freedom for all people. Timmy Crossover's position as a public figure requires even more diplomacy than the regular Joe Smoe on the street. I'm sure that if TH had taken three breaths before speaking he might have thought more wisely about what he said.

All that being said, I think TH was firing the first shot of the counterattack.

The counterattack that says it is insane and unproductive to the moral fabric of our society to glorify any individual who is tabbed a "hero" for deciding to publish a book that essentially is a self absorbed tribute to their sexual preferences.

Since when did "coming out" make you a hero?

Obviously it doesn't take much to be a hero nowadays.

So what John Amechi is gay? I personally wouldn't care if he held tea-parties with blow up dolls dressed as Margaret Thatcher. What a person does in the privacy of their own bedroom is not my concern. I don't think it's TH concern either. But like TH, I get sick and tired of this concept that the homosexual community has some sort of shared suffering with minorities in this nation.

I am in favor of hate crime laws that punish people for abusing anyone because of race, age, religion and even sexual preference.

What I am sick and tired of is hearing the homosexual community continue to pander for the sympathies of the public like they were being burned at the stake in old world Salem Mass.

The debate over whether or not an individual can be born gay will probably go on forever. So what, people are born without limbs, born with mental retardation, born deaf and  born blind.

When was the last time you heard of a person with Down's Syndrome being touted as a hero in the media? Which is a shame because people who have to overcome lifelong physical disabilities would have much more inspiring books for us to read, and for the media to blast all over front pages.

But no, an able bodied former millionaire (soon to be a millionaire again) gets touted as a martyr because he decides that being gay amongst his friends and family wasn't enough. Amechi felt compelled to write a book about it and then to compund the hypocrisy, appear on every network posible to tell his story.

Amechi's story is not at all unique. Millions of gay people live their lives the same way, cross dressers, B & B enthusiasts, swingers and heterosexuals live their sexual lives...in private.

I now know this for a certainty, TH would not be the best person to negotiate a peace deal. His lack of diplomacy and rational thinking has been recognized now by everyone.

Even more importantly, the world has started looking for heroes in all the wrong places.