Kevin Hart Steps Down from Oscars After Homophobic Tweets Surface

In the era of #Oscarssowhite, moviegoers are holding their awards show host to the same standard as an elected official. We just refuse to let the year Lady Gaga receives her first Oscar to be the year someone with a homophobic past hosts the Academy Awards!

Kevin Hart has just announced that he's stepping down from his hosting duties for the 91st awards show after some of his old, insensitive tweets resurfaced -- including the use of several homophobic slurs and one tweet that detailed how he'd abuse his son if he played with dolls. It appears that Hart tried to delete several of those tweets, but the damage had already been done.

On Thursday afternoon, Hart posted a video to Instagram, explaining that his team reached out to him over the backlash from the tweets. "Guys, I'm almost 40 years old," he said in the video. "If you don't believe that people change, grow, evolve as they get older, I don't know what to tell you." Hart's lack of apology in the video was apparent, as the whole situation seemed more of an inconvenience to him than an actual chance to "change, grow, evolve."

A few hours later, he posted another video, explaining that he'd received a call from the Academy about the tweets. "That call basically said, 'Apologize for your tweets of old or we're gonna have to move on and find another host.' I chose to pass. I passed on the apology." He went on to explain that he'd addressed the tweets (but didn't delete them) before, and he doesn't feel the need to do so again.

"We feed into internet trolls and reward them," he said. "I'm not gonna do it, man." To be clear, the "internet trolls" he's referring to are LGBTQ+ people and allies (including Billy Eichner and Jamie Lee Curtis) upset with a public figure and host of the gayest night of the year using anti-gay slurs. If that's his response to the Academy's ultimatum, then good riddance.

Hart later posted two tweets that apologized for offending the LGBTQ community. But in the same tweets, he officially announced he was stepping down from his hosting duties a mere day after he was given the role -- it appears the Academy has not released an official statement.

It sparked quite a "ding dong, the witch is dead" celebration via social media. In 2018, it shouldn't feel like pulling teeth to get someone to apologize and actually rectify their past mistakes.

With the sudden vacancy for such a highly coveted role, Twitter has quite a few opinions.