Monday, May 16, 2011

Coming Out and Making Excuses.

The President and Chief Executive of the Phoenix Suns has come out. He has told the world that he is gay. The response of many in the sports world has been to say that it is great that he has come out, that he is a great guy, and that no athlete could ever risk doing this. They may go on to bemoan the fact that no active professional male athlete has publicly declared that he is homosexual, but then they move on to other topics. The thesis seems to be that athletes aren't the brightest bulbs and exist in a world where they have to live up to decades old ideas of what a man is and there just isn't much to be done about it. I find this to be an unsatisfactory response. It reminds me of the argument my Grandparents always made about interracial romances. It was the wrong thing to do because the world wasn't ready for it and would make it tough on any couple that pursued such a path. There seem to be enough people in the sports world bemoaning the unfortunate reality that if they stopped bemoaning and started doing something that unfortunate reality might change. If someone makes ignorant comments, like Kobe Bryant or even better the idiot hockey agent who criticized a hockey player for shooting a pro marriage ad, then people need to speak up about it. If someone comes out and is blackballed, we all need to denounce it and reverse it. It is simply not acceptable to say that homosexuals can't come out in sports because athletes are Neanderthals, and leave it at that. Leaving it at that is has as much to do with the attitude towards homosexuality in professional sports as the Neanderthals do. We can't leave it at that anymore.

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