When a bunch of sweaty jocks, jock managers, and jock handlers are dangling around a locker room, slapping asses, 11 times out of 10 some thick neck genius is gonna call somebody a “homo fag queer cocksucker faggot ass-pirate” or something equally clever. You see, there’s still a lot of homophobia in sports, so it comes as no surprise that Marcello Lippi, coach of Italy’s national soccer team, recently told a web TV program, after anti-gay violence in Rome made headlines, that he’d never allow openly homosexual players to play for Italy because it would create scandal. Gay rights groups blew a whistle on him for the foul. If you needed a reminder that there are a lot of bigots who play with balls, just check out past slips of the tongue that created controversy.

TIM HARDAWAY
• After retired NBA center John Amaechi came out of the closet in 2007, the former all-star point guard went on a radio show to commit career suicide, saying flatly, “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.” On the bright side, he knows the definition of homophobic!

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PAUL SCHOLES
• After referee Frank De Bleeckere gave him a yellow card for a bad tackle in a 2006 Champions League match, the Manchester United midfielder allegedly called him a “fucking poof.” We think that’s bad, but we don’t speak magician.

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JOHN ROCKER
• In a January 2000 Sports Illustrated article, the steroidal Atlanta Braves pitcher pissed off gays, saying he’d never play in New York because he didn’t want to sit next to “some queer with AIDS” on the 7 train. John, John, John. Not all gay people are attracted to an asshole.

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GREG MCMACKIN
• In July 2009, at a Western Athletic Conference media preview, the University of Hawaii’s head football coach described a Notre Dame shimmy he’d seen as “this little faggot dance,” dropping two more f-bombs. We expected a tad more sensitivity from a man leading the Rainbow Warriors.

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DANA WHITE
• In 2009, after reading a mixed martial arts article that he didn’t agree with, Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White recorded a video tirade in which he called the writer, Loretta Hunt, “a fucking moron” and also let slip a gay slur. Low blow, Dana.

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TOTTENHAM HOTSPURS FANS
• When Portsmouth defender Sol Campbell played his former team in September 2008, onetime supporters got themselves arrested, fined, and banned from the grounds for a variety of racist and homophobic chants, including: “He’s big, he’s black, he takes it up the crack, Sol Campbell, Sol Campbell.” Guess Spurs and ass-less chaps don’t go together after all.

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OZZIE GUILLEN
• In May 2007, the often-offensive manager of the Chicago White Sox expressed his displeasure with critical Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti by calling him a “fucking fag.” In his subsequent apology, Guillen said, “I don’t have anything against those people. In my country [Venezuela], you call someone something like that and it is not the same as it is in this country.” It’s actually an invitation to slow-dance, gringos!

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MIKE TYSON
• At a 2002 press conference that turned into a brawl with Lennox Lewis’s camp, Iron Mike focused his rage on a spectator who’d yelled that he should be put in a straight jacket, screaming, “I’ll eat your asshole alive, bitch!” and “I’ll fuck you till you love me, faggot!” On second thought, maybe he was just cruising.

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NEW YORK RANGERS FANS
• Late in hockey games at Madison Square Garden, it is tradition for Rangers fan Larry Goodman to dance goofily and be broadcast on the big screen, at which point his fellow fans put the gays amongst them ill at ease chanting, “Homo Larry!” And yet men on skates somehow elude their homophobia.

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MATT MILLEN
• In 2003, after Johnnie Morton, a Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver who had returned to beat the Lions years after being cut from the team by Millen, snubbed a handshake and told him to kiss his ass, Detroit’s president responded, “You faggot!” Ironically, Millen bent over for the entire NFL in 2008, getting fired as his historically bad team went 0-16.

Pause. Take a second to acknowledge how far we’ve come as a society that comic legend Stan Lee is executive producing a series about a gay superhero for Showtime. The project is based on openly gay writer/director Perry Moore’s novel Hero, which tells the story of Thom Creed, a teenager and the world’s first homosexual superhero, who wrestles with his secret identities when he’s not pinning villains.

Creed isn’t actually the first gay do-gooder. (Did you really think the super-chiseled men in tights running with the super-chiseled man-women were straight?) Whether their homosexuality was declared or merely implied, gay heroes have long existed in comics and have helped pave the way for this new series. Check out some of the gay do-gooders to grace the pages of Marvel and DC comics over the years. (Forget the indies'like indie rock and indie rap, it goes without saying that they’ve always been gay)…

Click here to see the gayest Comic Book Superheroes…