“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.”

That was Tim Hardaway four years ago, in an interview with Miami’s 790 The Ticket, talking about John Amaechi coming out of the closet. He kind of apologized the next day. “I shouldn’t have said that I hate gay people or anything like that,” he said. “I should have just said I don’t condone him being in the locker room.” He probably shouldn’t have said anything. Hardaway was my favorite player growing up, and hearing him speak out against basic human rights for basic human people made my stomach hurt. I owned a Dream Team and a Golden State Warriors jersey with Hardaway’s number, and that’s not an easy thing for a kid to do in Virginia in the 90s. Here I am stuck telling people I loved Jud Buechler. Jud Buechler.

Four years later I’m proud to say my stomach is feeling better. Hardaway could’ve moved on with his life and done one of those “that’s just who I am, I don’t condone it” acts, but he’s done us one better. He’s not only okay with gay people being in the United States, he wants them to have what most folks in the United States take for granted. He showed up in El Paso, Texas this week to support to a group of politicians who are trying to be recalled by a religious group for their stance on gay rights.

From the El Paso Times, by way of Ball Don’t Lie:

In town for a golf outing, Hardaway attended a press conference urging citizens to oppose recall efforts against Mayor John Cook and city Reps. Susie Byrd and Steve Ortega. The three are being recalled by a group of religious conservatives who are angry the three voted to restore health benefits for gay and unmarried partners of city employees — despite a ballot initiative in November that had abolished them.

That’s about as apolitical as the gay rights discussion gets. Do you want these people to be taken care of when they get sick, yes/no? Hardaway wants to the people who are angry to come to the same conclusions he did between now and so very, very long ago.

“I would say grow up and catch up with the times,” he said. “It’s all around the world.”

The two comments posted on Ball Don’t Lie about this story sum it up nicely. The first, “Sometimes what you think is right is just wrong. Takes a real man to admit that. Good for Hardaway.” The second, “sell-out stand by your rules if it aint right it aint right”. I hope one of those makes more sense to you than the other. For those of you who can’t tell the difference, you can’t be my friend. And here I am having to be friends with Jud Buechler.

I suppose many of you have televisions and cable subscriptions, and thus watch "The Colbert Report."  Nevertheless, opportunities to post Stephen Colbert clips on a sports blog are rare, and on Tuesday night he had former NBA player / author / friend of With Leather / Briton John Amaechi on the show, and of course there were laughs to be had.  Turns out he's gay, too.  Who knew?

This is a scan from Sports Illustrated's baseball preview issue. That's a funny quote from John Amaechi, right? But I feel like I've seen it somewhere before… but where? I just can't quite put my finger — oh yeah, that's right. About two weeks ago I spent a night out on the town with Amaechi.

I quoted him on several different topics, but I tried to make it clear that it wasn't a journalistic endeavor on my part, since I didn't write anything down at the time, then I went out and got mildly drunk that night, then I wrote a whole day's worth of posts before getting to the Amaechi story. So, while I'm confident that I correctly communicated Amaechi's sentiment, I probably didn't get his words 100% correct. (Editor's note: John saw the post and told me he enjoyed it, so I didn't get anything too wrong.) Anyway, here's how I quoted him on the Bible thing:

He was also confounded by people who pick and choose what leftovers from the Old Testament are and aren't sins: "It also forbids eating shellfish. If being gay is as bad as going to Red Lobster, I'm not really worried about it."

Wow, that's suspiciously similar, isn't it? And by "suspiciously similar" I mean "word-for-word." Listen, I'm not going to say SI lifted a quote from a completely journalistically irresponsible blog, but… wait. Yes. Yes, that is what I'm saying. The funny thing is, if they had just added "as quoted by the website WithLeather.com," I'd feel all special inside and think SI was totally awesome. Instead, SI is now dead to me.

Well, except for the swimsuit issue. That still rules.

Stealing-stuff UPDATE: Orson Swindle from EDSBS writes, "Check out page 22 of Sports Illustrated–they have a ripoff of the Fulmer Cup competition called… 'Campus Leaders' or something like that." Oh, so I guess I'm not special. It must have been uncredited blog material week for SI. Also, I need to thank Big Daddy Drew for the scan, and Henry Abbott for being the first to point the quote out to me. Look at me! Giving credit to people is easy!

Non-requisite clarification: As ***always***, I'm not serious. SI isn't dead to me. What's there to be upset about? They used a quote — it's not like I own those words. But it's either a nice little step forward for blogs or a sad step back for print media when I'm being trusted as a news source.

Almost nothing on this website should be taken seriously. It's here to provide laughs, not make serious statements or accusations or shed light on injustice or any of that. It's fun: I truly enjoy calling Canada "Canadia" and pretending that everyone from South America speaks Mexican. It's much more fun — and easier — than providing serious commentary. So you'll excuse me if, for just one post, I avoid cheap jokes.

A friend of With Leather who works in radio tried to get me a telephone interview with John Amaechi. Excited yet woefully bad at journalism, I emailed several prominent bloggers (oxymoron noted) about what I should ask the retired NBA vet who publicly came out of the closet with his new book, Man in the Middle (Big Daddy Drew: "Tell me more reasons why Jerry Sloan is a fucking asshole").

Naturally, the interview fell through, so instead I went to his book-signing at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble in Manhattan with the hopes of asking a question or two that could make decent blog fodder.

I ended up getting a lot more than that.

The event was crowded, and I took the first open seat I could find. The person next to me was Rich Merritt, a former Marine officer (like me!) with a USMC tattoo on his shoulder (like me!) who wrote a memoir (like me!) that shares details of his erotic gay experiences during "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (ummm…). But it's not like I give a shit if a guy is black or white or straight or gay or what have you. Former Marines who are also writers are hard to come by in New York, and as far as I'm concerned, that's enough common history to be friends.

As chance would have it, Rich has the same literary agent as Amaechi, and all of us went out together for drinks afterwards. What follows is a series of non-journalistic observations I culled from John's long question-and-answer session with the crowd and our subsequent travels around the Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and the West Village as we sought out booze and a scene where John could see "pretty people."

• First and foremost: John Amaechi is really fucking smart. He uses words like "ethnocentrism" and "empathic" and speaks with refreshing candor. Every response he gave was infused with so much perspective that I found myself repeatedly thinking, "Yeah, why DO people care that he was a gay in the NBA?" Example: Spurred on by some excellent insight I got from Kevin Arnovitz at ClipperBlog — he's the only openly gay sports blogger I know — I asked John about how a lot of writers and fans had talked about how the bigger development would be when an active player came out, and how much that hypothetical player's talent level could make it an easier transition. He laughed off the notion of it somehow creating monumental change in America's attitudes toward homosexuals. He took a metaphorical step back and wondered how, if the hate crime against Matthew Shepard couldn't erase prejudice against gays, what would "gay Shaq" be able to do?

• On his NBA career, and choosing retirement and working with kids over suiting up for the Knicks: "They needed a lot more help than what I could give them." And again, the perspective (I'm paraphrasing): "What I did, when you boil it down, was put a ball in a hole. Ten years of my life: putting a ball in a hole. I was good at it. I could do it from 18 feet, even. Sometimes 20 feet on a good night." His stance is that working with other people and affecting lives positively is more important than playing sports professionally.

• On the level of support versus animosity from the American black community: the majority are intelligent, empathic, open-minded blacks who simply aren't very vocal in their support. "Unfortunately, the sound of a million people shrugging is silence," so the voices that carry are the loud, bigoted ones, and it's an unfortunate coincidence that much of the immediate, public face of bigotry right now is black (Tim Hardaway, Isaiah Washington).

• Near the end of the Q&A, Ebony Haith from the first season of America's Next Top Model, who is openly gay, praised John for his honesty. How did I know she was from ANTM? She began her little speech by saying, "My name's Ebony, and most people recognize me from the first season of America's Next Top Model." John later admitted that he was surprised that someone would introduce herself in the style of Troy McClure.

• On religion, and the persistence of many Americans who "pray for him" and encourage him to "find Jesus": "I'm not agnostic and I'm not atheist. I honestly don't think about it. I think about this [motioned between him and the crowd]." His priorities are people; he's bothered by people who "wander around, staring into the sun, all the while stepping on people"; and people who quote Leviticus to him need to understand that that was the Old Testament: "It's been revised, you know. There's a new edition." He was also confounded by people who pick and choose what leftovers from the Old Testament are and aren't sins: "It also forbids eating shellfish. If being gay is as bad as going to Red Lobster, I'm not really worried about it."

• John finished his Q&A by demanding that the audience not clap, suggesting that they instead "buy him gin."

• Are there gay players currently in the NBA: yes, and he's friends with them. Or was. They haven't been showing up on his instant messenger buddy list recently.

• He insinuated that he had had romantic encounters with at least one other NBA player, but noted that merely being gay in the NBA wasn't enough to build a relationship around.

• On Garrison Keillor's Salon article about how gays need to tone down the stereotype of effeminate flamboyance if they want to be accepted as parents and couples: "My response to that would be for him to go screw himself." In all fairness to Keillor, that's Amaechi's response for just about anyone who says or writes anything that smacks of or reinforces homophobia. He used that phrase several times last night.

• His favorite gin: Hendrick's. Bonus points for me: that's what I keep in my liquor cabinet. It makes the best martinis. We also agree that Tanqueray No. 10 is too sweet.

• A six-foot-nine, 320-pound man can down a gin and tonic VERY quickly.

• For those of you who don't have gay friends, gay men check out men the same way straight men check out women. John Amaechi is no different. This seems like a mundane, obvious detail, but then a woman at one of John's recent signings told him, "I didn't realize gay people could be black." Yeah.

• My friend Billy joined us at G Bar (yes, that's a gay bar). Billy is an actor and close friends with T.R. Knight of Grey's Anatomy, who was the recipient of Isaiah Washington's "f—-t" slur. In the "it's a small world" department, Amaechi had spoken with Washington earlier that day — apparently Washington is making an effort to clean up his image in the gay community and the public eye.

• Take note: Having a beach house in Malibu is a lifestyle. Being gay is a life.

• He's looking forward to going home to London tonight for nine days, and getting back into shape (note: he doesn't look out of shape, at least as far as us regular-sized people go). Next week he'll appear on Bill O'Reilly via satellite. He gave the impression that he wasn't welcome in the studio. "Well yeah," I joked, "they might catch what you've got."

• Another Big Daddy Drew question: Are there gay NBA groupies? Answer: no. At least not remotely in the way there are women available for the straight players.

• Several of the bloggers I reached out to wanted to know: is Amaechi a top or a bottom? Seems a bit of a personal question to ask of a celebrity I don't really know, and I struggled with a way to pose the question. Well, Billy and John and I had a nightcap at Soho House, a ritzy Meatpacking District club where you have to be a member or be with a member in order to get in (I fall into the latter category). While Billy spoke with an acquaintance, I asked John, "How'd you come up with 'Man in the Middle'? Shouldn't it be 'Man on Top' or 'Man on Bottom'?" Alas, he didn't take the bait, and I was left with a mundane explanation of the position of center, and not intimate details of his sex life. Sorry. I said I was bad at journalism.

And that was that. Sometime around 1:30 a.m. we went our separate ways — John across the street to the Hotel Gansevoort, me to the subway for an hour of waiting and changing trains. I felt badly that I couldn't be a better a wing man for him in his search for pretty boys, but he didn't seem too upset by it and gave Billy and me hugs as he left.

I went home just absolutely impressed by Amaechi as a person. Not as a gay man; not as an NBA player; not as a mixed-race gay Brit in the NBA. He's simply a phenomenally intelligent, good-hearted, and good-humored person. And he probably looks forward to the day that all people see him as such: minus the labels.