When the old words fail

I saw the other day that former NBA star Tim Hardaway said of gay people:

Well, you know I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States. So yeah, I don’t like it.’

I think we need to stop using “homophobic” to describe attitudes like this. A phobia is an unreasoning fear, and it’s hard to see Hardaway’s attitude toward gays as being similar to a claustrophobe’s fear of being in an enclosed space.

Let’s call this what it is: bigotry. Tim Hardaway is a disgusting bigot, in precisely the same way that many are toward blacks.