14 DAY TRIAL // Boxer Evander Holyfield is one of the house guests on the latest season of Celebrity Big Brother UK, which kicked off just a few days ago. He hasn’t been that long in the House but, even so, he’s already causing waves with his anti-gay comments.
In the video below, Holyfield is talking with a housemate about his views on being gay, which, he says, is no different than being handicapped. He makes sure to stress that he doesn’t mean that as an offense to the handicapped, but rather in the sense that both can be fixed.
The boxer’s belief is that being gay is not normal, it is not a choice, and it can surely be “fixed.” The 51-year-old star is a born again Christian.
“That ain't normal,” he says. “If you were born and your leg were turned this way – what would you do? You go to the doctor and get it fixed back right?”
Even though his housemate was eager to stop him from pursuing the argument, saying this was not the place to have this conversation (which was probably meant as a reminder to him that the cameras were rolling and they weren’t alone in the conversation), Holyfield continued.
“All I'm trying to tell you, you know how handicap people are born? You can’t say because they are born that way you can’t move that...,” he said, as shown in the video.
However, the difference between the gays and the handicapped, in the boxer’s opinion, is that the former do get to make a choice about their lifestyle. Being gay is an option, he stresses several times because, he explains, no one says they’re gay until after they’ve slept with a person of the same sex.
The video also shows that the BB producers reprimanded him for the offensive comments he made, to which Holyfield replied that he forgot the cameras were on and that he thought he was merely having a conversation in which he could express his views.
Reports in the British media claim the same views could cost him his place in the Big Brother House.