Can a celebrity’s comments be considered homophobic if the gay guy the comments were actually made to wasn’t offended in the slightest? That’s what observers are arguing over thanks to the emergence of a new Paris Hilton audio tape that features the reality star discussing the prevalence of AIDS with a male model.
The conversation in question was recorded in secret during a cab ride in New York City on September 7th by the driver. Paris’ friend is heard explaining how some gay guys use the phone app Grindr to quickly locate a sexual partner. She’s overtly disgusted by the information and offers up the following thoughts, as per Radar Online…
”Ewwww ... gay guys are the horniest people in the world. Most of them probably have AIDS ... I would be so scared if I was a gay guy ... you'll like die of AIDS."
On the one hand, it’s sensible that Hilton would be taken aback by the idea of people arranging sexual meet-ups with total strangers on a phone application. The way she phrased that shock, however, was obviously a bit of an overstatement, especially when taken out of context.
Hilton’s representative has already released a statement since the audio tape first hit the Internet saying there’s a whole lot of this conversation that was edited out. Apparently, the heiress’ friend cited a specific example of an HIV positive man who continued finding partners for unprotected sex using the phone app. You can take a look at a portion of the statement below…
“The cab driver who recorded this, only provided a portion of the conversation. It was not her intent to make any derogatory comments about all gays. Paris Hilton is a huge supporter of the gay community and would never purposefully make any negative statements about anyone’s sexual orientation.”
It’s definitely hard to imagine Paris Hilton having any kind of real animosity toward gay people. She routinely hangs out with members of the GLBT community, and while her thoughts could have been more eloquently stated, the basic point of her opinion, that having unprotected anonymous sex is horrifying, is understandable.
Wrap it up, people. And for the record, poor form on this cab driver for taping people he picked up.
