WHY doesn’t the NRL just burn Mitchell Moses at the stake? The 19-year-old Wests Tigers player has been hit with a two-week match ban for making a “homophobic slur” against Queensland opponent Luke Bateman. He did no such thing. But he’s been caught up in this illiberal modern day crusade to hunt down homophobes, and who cares if he’s guilty? Rugby league will make an example of him to show how progressive it is. Paying obeisance to homo-fascism. What Moses actually said was “f ... ing gay c ...”, during an on-field biffo with Bateman in the dying ­moments of Saturday’s Under 20s state of origin game. These immortal words were captured on a referee’s microphone, and rugby league’s anti-homophobia police swung into action. There was no problem with the players trying to punch each other. No problem with the foul language. No problem with the sexist c-word. But woe betide the player who ­offends the gods of homosexuality. Let’s get one thing straight. “Gay” no longer just means “homosexual”. The word has changed meaning over the last decade. Young people use “gay” to mean lame, or dumb or stupid, as in: “That’s so gay.” South Park even had an episode about it. In Britain there was a campaign against homophobia with the slogan “homophobia is gay”. Before “gay” came to mean homosexual, it meant happy and bright. Hardly anyone uses it that way now. Young people of an earlier era changed the word and now young people of today have changed it into something else. Easy come easy go. No one owns a word. English evolves, and it is quite capable of ­embodying two separate meanings in the one word. It is just tyrannical to demand that people must use a word only in the form approved by homosexual activists. So why is anyone pretending that what Mitchell said had anything to do with homosexuality? It didn’t. He was being offensive but he was not being homophobic, which last time I looked meant, “an extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexual people”. Bateman isn’t even homosexual. What more evidence do you need that Mitchell didn’t say “gay” as a ­homophobic slur? When the NRL interviewed Bateman after the match he said he didn’t care what Mitchell had said and didn’t want to take the issue further. The NRL thought-police then went back to Bateman on Sunday for what has been described as a check on his “welfare”. This is insane. Bateman still didn’t want to make a complaint, so the NRL went ahead anyway. The punishment is devastating for Mitchell. As Dean Ritchie reveals in the sports pages today, he had been told he would be getting his big break on Friday night, debuting for the Wests Tigers in an NRL first grade match against the Roosters. He’s a good player and he’ll probably get another chance, but who knows when? Rugby league is a fickle game. Injured players return, other rookies shine, injuries strike. Mitchell’s moment was Friday night and that has been taken away from him, capriciously and unreasonably, by a rugby league organisation that has lost the plot. They could have given him counselling or community work to teach him to keep a clean mouth in a game full of microphones. But the NRL wanted to parade as a champion of homosexual rights, so who cares about fairness or honesty. What might have started as a noble cause to prevent vilification of homosexuals is in danger of backfiring. If punishing an innocent man is supposed to promote tolerance, someone at NRL headquarters is on drugs.