Hello Friends,

I would like to have an open discussion about LGBT athletes. Currently there is no known LGBT athletes on any roster in any of the four major sports leagues in the United States. That is assuming you consider the four major leagues NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL, there could be the case that MLS is one of the four and could potentially become the biggest league in the future. Fortunately there is a few LGBT athletes on MLS teams.

Also it's encouraging to see WNBA being so open towards LGBT athletes.

While it is also encouraging to see athletes like Michael Sam and Jason Collins announce that they are homosexuals, it is also discouraging to see that coming out as gay essentially ended Jason Collins career and Michael Sam has yet to play a single snap in a regular season NFL team despite being the player of the year in the SEC his Senior year.

I believe we will see LGBT athletes become common in the future, but I hope it's sooner rather than later.

-O

Sports fan are still primarily older white males. That's a bad demographic to push diversity on.

I don't know what happened with Michael Sam. With Collins to be fair he was like 35 and pretty much done in the L when he came out. I remember his announcement being widely supported. He did end up playing a little the next season which was cool because I think he was the first openly out player in the major leagues to do so.

I did find this nugget on wiki:

"Following his announcement, Collins has received high praise and support for deciding to publicly reveal that he is gay.[36] Fellow NBA star Kobe Bryant praised his decision, as did others from around the league, including NBA commissioner David Stern.[36] President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, former president Bill Clinton, and Collins' corporate sponsor Nike were also among those offering their praise and support for Collins.[36] However, ESPN basketball analyst Chris Broussard stated that he did not believe that Collins can "live an openly homosexual lifestyle" and be a Christian"

I think that fan backlash is low on the list of reasons why gay athletes haven't come out. Athletes don't necessarily have to interact with fans very often if they don't want to, and the net sponsorship benefits of coming out are probably positive overall. IMO the biggest reasons are that coming out is a huge responsibility and guaranteed to draw a lot of potentially unwanted attention + the general homophobia of the jock populace that might make the day to day grind harder than it has to be

Could might be a (rational?) fear held by gay athletes that (at least some) owners won't want to pay an out gay athlete if a comparable non-out athlete is available at the same price.

move to politards thread?

Not just older white guys. So many athletes, many black, have spoken about how they would have issues with a gay teammate. Player culture is also a big hurdle

The next breakthrough is going to come from kids who come out in high school.
My-King Johnson has been out to his family since he was 12 and is signed to play DE at Arizona next year.

Teams have historically shown that they'll do anything to win. It is only matter of time before a top tier recruit makes it really dumb for teams to be homophobic.

Lots of jesus freaks in U.S sports too, not surprising that no one would be comfortable coming out in a jock + gay hating, christian, enviorment.

I believe this is unfortunately a possibility. There needs to be steps in place to prevent this from happening.

This is a great point and something that we can look forward to. There will be an absolutely amazing player at some point in High School, who happens to be queer. It has been shown that kids today are less concerned about "coming out" so they will be out and colleges will still want them because they are so good.

True. The best we can do is educate them and show that these are people just like they are. If you stop and think about it, we have come a long ways from the days where people always associated lgbt with aids. But we still have a little bit still to go.

In general, athletes and fans are becoming much more progressive, I think. It would also help a lot if more athletes would come out, but that hasn't been the case. There probably aren't many gay male athletes in the big sports, and even fewer who aren't replacement level like Michael Sam.

I'm sure there are signs, but at age 12 I hadn't hit puberty so there's no way I could know if I was gay or not. Without hitting puberty or having just hit puberty, how would one know if they were gay or not?

You never had a crush on anyone before puberty?

It was more of a mental crush, being told you should like some girl and then mentally going through the process of which one you should like

If you ever talk to a gay person about it, virtually all of them will tell you they knew from a very young age.

I knew someone that had a few gfs, but just came out to his friends at the age of 28. He came out by saying that he thinks he might be gay, so it sounds like he wasn't entirely sure until fairly recently

gay/lesbian/bi is one discussion and tran is another.

I don't see the general public having much of an issue with an openly gay athlete and I think its just a matter of time till we one in the big 4, if not all 4. There are going to be some outspoken people against it, but those are going to become fewer and fewer as time goes on.

I think a trans athlete is a whole different discussion, and I don't think we will see a trans athlete in the big 4 for sometime, maybe not in our lives.

If you expand the big 4 into the big 5, John Epping has come out publicly

Nothing wrong with this thread is this forum. Could lead to good discussions.

One of the big four really does need a star to come out some time soon...would be a huge marketing opportunity. As well as a big deal for social justice reasons, ldo.

I think you may be right, it should be. Amazing that it's taken so long for it to even get to this stage.

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Anyway like everything else as soon as a few come out more and more will come out and it'll soon be socially acceptable (that the right term?) for a pro and it won't harper him/her/it?. You'll still get the odd bigot and that I don't think will ever change (not in our life time anyway.).

Fans are still racist to players and likewise players are racist to fellow players. It's a minority but still goes on.

It's taken decades to get to this stage with racism and only really recently that LGBT has gained mainstream media attention.

There is still a LONG way to go before players will feel comfortable about coming out.

He's probably just some degree of bi. Sexual attraction isn't a binary concept.

Honestly thought we'd have more athletes come out by now after Collins etc...maybe start with the no-names and move up until a major star or 2 do it. But I guess we just have to be patient, those individuals have a better idea of the male professional sports culture and apparently it still just ****ing sucks for homosexuals. Eventually a threshold of non-****tyness will be reached in the locker rooms I guess and we'll see more progress.

Billy Bean, CF for the Dodgers was openly gay wasn't he? I think his teammates knew while he played.

They don't come out because there are no positives to coming out professionally speaking.

It only takes one negative response from some Jesus freak athlete to throw off the entire team and the locker room atmosphere.