Breaking the gay line
by digby
I’m afraid we still have a way to go:
On February 15 of this year, Robbie Rogers, a former member of the U.S. Men’s National soccer team and a professional player in both Europe and the United States, posted on a personal blog that he was gay. Rogers would have been the first openly gay player in major American professional sports, but he announced his retirement in the same post. In a New York Times article today, Rogers didn’t rule out a return to the pitch but said he had no choice but to retire. “I need to be a little selfish about this,” Rogers told the New York Times.
This week, rumors swirled that a National Football League player was contemplating coming out as gay in the near future. That prompted Seattle Seahawks defensive end Chris Clemons to tweet that a player coming out would be a “selfish act” that would “immediately separate a lockerroom and divide a team.”
That makes for an odd juxtaposition, the now openly gay former athlete thinking he’s selfish for coming out in his own way and the straight athlete who thinks it would be selfish for a player to come out at all. Clemons, who later tweeted that he had no problem with gay athletes but thinks they should leave their love life at home, could learn from the story of Rogers, who lived as a gay man in secret for years. Until last year, Rogers hadn’t told his family, his friends, or his teammates. He didn’t go to gay bars or date other men. It was, he told the Times, a terribly unhealthy way to live, though coming out has enabled him to find peace.
Obviously, this will change. There will be a gay Jackie Robinson at some point who will endure the taunts of the bigots to break the gay line. And you can already see that the arguments have changed from “get out faggot” to “don’t divide the team” (at least in public) so there’s been progress already. But come on: this is 2013 and most of these guys are young and have known plenty of gays. It’s not as if we’re dealing with old white guys here. I don’t even really believe they give a damn — it just feels like phony posturing at this point. Get with the program already.
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