Comedian Tracy Morgan on Tuesday
returned to Nashville to apologize for an anti-gay rant.
In a routine delivered in Nashville,
Morgan, the star of NBC's 30 Rock, condoned anti-gay bullying
and said he would stab his son to death if he found out he was gay.
Morgan subsequently apologized. Last
week, he
met with troubled LGBT youth from the Ali Forney Center in New York
City. He's also committed to participate in GLAAD's upcoming
Amplify Your Voice video campaign to combat anti-LGBT
bullying.
During a press conference, he
apologized directly to Kevin Rogers, who was in the audience during
Morgan's June 3 performance and later wrote about the experience on
Facebook.
“I apologize to Kevin and people that
were at the show,” Morgan told reporters. “I want to apologize
to my friends, and my family and my fans and everyone in every
community who were offended with this. I didn't know. I didn't mean
it … I don’t have a hateful bone in my body. I don’t believe
that anyone should be bullied or just made to feel bad about who they
are. I totally feel that, in my heart, I don’t care who you love,
same-sex or not, as long as you have the ability to love. … I don’t
really see gay or straight, I just see human beings now.”
“From the bottom of my heart, I
apologize to everybody,” he added. “Thank you everybody for
forgiving me.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)
Rogers said he accepted Morgan's
apology.
“Tracy was sincere and spoke from his
heart today,” Rogers said. “I decided to speak out and use my
voice to inspire others. The best thing that has come from this is a
national conversation that anti-gay violence is unacceptable and that
homophobia is outdated.”