He Left His Heart Out Of San Francisco

I was going to title this ''What A Fag!'', sarcastically of course, to bring the point home even more, but didn't for two reasons: 1. I'm not a stand-up comedian and probably wouldn't be able to get away with it, and 2. there are still too many stupid people around who would not bother to read on and would get angered up by taking away exactly the opposite of what I was going to say.

Also, I think we've used that word with its demeaning meaning for long enough and enough times to not be allowed to use it ever again.It should be retired and put in the Hall Of Fame of shitty derogatory terms as a first-ballot entry.

So ''Generic Fucking Title'' it is.

The stereotype about San Francisco is that it's ''all fun and gay games'', a paradise of civil rights, human rights, parties, free speech and health, full of hippies and homosexuals and winning sports teams that beat the shit out of your regular Houston Texans, New York Yankees, Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks - everything a Republican would like to make illegal.

The reality is otherwise: a mere bridge across from Oakland, one of the harshest ghettos cities on the West Coast, both cities are stricken with extreme poverty. With poverty come social issues , class warfare, and often a reduction of peoples' rights privileges entitlements equality programs. California - one of the U.S.' most liberal states - is bankrupt, and with a lack of funds usually comes cuts and disputes.

Add that boiling mixture to pro football's machismo culture and the stigma associated with homosexuality in African-American communities and you get the statistical anomaly we had during Super Bowl week, when the San Francisco 49ers' Chris Culliver said this, when asked about a recent campaign of players coming out in favour of gay marriage:

No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do.

What most people who say that type of comment fail to realize is that they all hurt the same, and they're all born out of fear and a ''divide and conquer'' mentality for those who can take advantage of it. Replace the word ''gay'' by any one of the following to realize just how much: Black, Hispanic, Jewish, retarded, handicapped. It's also true for other groups: women, Quebecers (most notably in hockey or Canadian politics), miners, smokers, AIDS patients.

To make amends, Culliver spent time with a LGBT group last week, ''learning'', and ''using his high profile as an athlete to help''.

Fine. But why do I feel like as soon as he got home, he took an hour-long bath in Purell?