“I want to say this,” the NBA star-turned-commentator said in a video posted earlier this week by TikTok user l._banana . “If you’re gay or transgender, I love you. Hey, and if anybody gives you shit, you tell ’em Charles said fuck you!”
The comments are in line with previous remarks made by the former pro basketball player. In 2020, Barkley said on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” that he was never going to let anti-LGBTQ discrimination “happen on my watch.” He then recounted how he had convinced the NBA to move its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, in protest of the state’s “bathroom bill” that effectively blocked cities from allowing trans people to use restrooms in line with their gender identity.
“Black people know what discrimination is like,” he told DeGeneres. “If you’re in a position of power, you’ve got to always stand up against discrimination. I’ve been blessed.”
“God bless the gay people,” he said at the time. “They are great people.”