Farhad, you wrote that you liked what McCain said at Mark Bingham's funeral. Here's an excerpt from that eulogy:

"I will try very hard, very hard, to discharge my public duties in a manner that honors their memory." McCain was referring to Bingham, an openly gay man, and his fellow passengers on Flight 93 who sacrificed their lives trying to thwart the planned use of that plane as a weapon.

It may have seemed noble at the time for McCain to wax so eloquent about a gay hero, but by meeting with Jerry Falwell, speaking at his fundamentalist university, and claiming now that Falwell is actually not an "agent of intolerance," McCain has totally voided any good will he may have previously deserved for his praise of Bingham.

Falwell is an unabashed homophobe and advocate for discrimination against gay people. Embracing him and, implicitly, his message, does not honor the memory of Mark Bingham.

First, I have to take issue with what Carsm wrote, which was unfortunately typical of most hetero guys' outlooks but is in fact very misguided and ignorant:

"There will always be a significant portion of the male population that will use gay insults to question another man's manliness. It will never end. And it's really not all that insulting, if you ask me. Someone who feels that another person is inferior because of their skin color is much worse than saying that a gay man is less of a man than a hetero."

Insulting someone based on their sexual orientation is just as egregious as racism. And suggesting that all gay men are "less of a man" that straight guys is absurd. I'm a gay man who is just as masculine and down to earth as any straight guy. When I tell new acquaintances that I'm gay, they are always surprised. That gets discouraging, because it reinforces how powerful the stereotypes are. I blame both straight and gay people for that. I always hated Will and Grace because it gives people the idea that there are two kinds of gay guys: the comical, extremely flaming type and the slightly less flaming guy who's all fussy and neat and whose best friend has to be a straight woman. A lot of us are nothing like that at all. I'm a slob, and most of my closest friends are straight guys. But even guys who are effeminate are often as courageous character-wise as anyone, because they have to put up with so much shit their whole lives from people (like Carsm, possibly) who feel a need to think they're better than someone or "more of a man" than someone.

By the way, Carsm, are you aware that Mark Bingham, one of the passengers on United 93 who confronted the terrorists, was a gay man? Do you think he was less of a man than you? Maybe you can do some research on him on the Internet and learn something about what it means to be a man.

Then there's what timhowe wrote:

"Wanna know why there aren't any "out" current players in the major male sports here? Because virtually all of the pro locker rooms are bastions of homophobia… The point is that Ozzie's language is standard fare in locker rooms all over the country (and not just the pros). It's a shame, yeah. We all wish it weren't so. But stop with all BS about Ozzie being some kind of aberrant, frothing-at-the-mouth bigot."

I agree, Ozzie is probably nowhere near as bigoted as a lot of other people in sports or in the general population. He just doesn't think about the effect his words will have. And he's probably never given much thought to how it feels to be a guy who happens to like guys, just wanting to live life like everyone else, but having to constantly feel yourself slighted by people in all walks of life who have no compuction about using "gay" as an insult/putdown, let alone words like "fag." It sucks, I'll tell you right now. It's disappointing to feel like I live in an era when people should be way the hell more enlightened than they are. And it's not just locker-room language that's the problem. Even some staunchly liberal, pro-gay rights friends of mine, who have no problems with homosexuality, still use "gay" to mean lame or stupid. With all the damn words in the English language, why is it the word I'm forced to use to describe myself is one people can't get beyond using as an epithet as though they're still in 5th grade?

Anyway, punishing someone or forcing them to go to a Gay Pride parade is not the answer. I hate parades myself, and I hate rainbow flags, and I have no interest in dance clubs or the music that gets played at them, or steroided-up buff guys dancing on floats, so forcing me to go to a Pride parade would definitely be punishment. I don't think it would necessarily help Ozzie to be more sensitive to the way he uses language. The problem is that from elementary school classrooms to Howard Stern to locker rooms to sitcoms to blogs and everywhere else, people need to stop equating

homosexuality with weakness, lameness, effeminacy, and other stuff that has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, there's so much homophobic sentiment in this country, and people are so afraid to stand up to their peers and demand a more thoughtful standard of speech from them, that this'll probably never happen.