The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

During Super Bowl Sunday, CNN political commentator Roland Martin issued a homophobic tweet telling readers to "smack the ish" out of any dude hyped by David Beckham's H&M underwear ad.

By Sunday night, Gays and Lesbians Allied Against Defamation (GLAAD) had called on CNN to fire Martin. By Monday night, Martin issued an extended explanation saying that he meant to poke fun at Beckham fans rather than men who find Beckham attractive.

By Wednesday, CNN suspended him for his "regrettable and offensive" tweets. And this morning, Martin announced looking forward to a productive conversation with GLAAD about why he shouldn't encourage others to attack men who like men's athletic underwear commercials.

The prediction is that Martin will only be suspended until right before the 10 state primaries held this March 6th on Super Tuesday. At which point Martin will have finished with his GLAAD-mandated public penance and CNN will reinstate him again in his usual role as political commentator - basically making his sentence a largely symbolic slap on the wrists with a clear end point.

But more interesting is the reaction of Martin's wife, Jaquie Hood Martin, an ex-gay therapist who tweeted the following:

Mrs. Martin is accurate in accusing GLAAD of connecting the LGBT rights to the black civil rights movement, but she goes a step too far in accusing GLAAD of unfairly targeting men of color.

Mrs. Martin has since deleted her Twitter account and GLAAD has issued a statement condemning the use of racial slurs against the Martins and the larger African-American community.

But perhaps Mrs. Martin and GLAAD have both stumbled into the strange intersection of racial tension in the LGBT community: one that we can only gauge better by examining GLAAD's history of high-profile anti-gay targets and their race.