The first openly gay man in a major American pro sports league is generously proportioned enough to ward off any foam-flecked bigots, at 7-feet and 255 pounds, but Jason Collins has a less-easy-to identify kind of fortitude, too. Bravery takes a lot of forms, physical being just one, and a particularly unappreciated brand of it is social courage, which is the courage to to risk your place in the society you move in.
About 10 minutes after Collins came out in Sports Illustrated magazine on Monday, the chorus of approval he received was equal to a holiday parade. The White House saluted him, and former President Bill Clinton issued a statement of congratulations. Messages of support came from fellow players like Steve Nash, who gave him “maximum respect” on Twitter. All of which bordered on over-congratulations and provoked Freedom Center Fellow Ben Shapiro to the killjoy observation, “Collins is a hero? Our standard for heroism has dropped quite a bit since Normandy.”
But physical heroism and the moral kind don’t always go together – the Confederacy proved that. If you are tempted to ask how much guts it took for Collins to come out, you can answer that question by simply asking yourself another one:
If it was so easy, then why had no one done it before?
True, this wasn’t securing a beachhead, but when the first keystroke of his announcement, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. I’m also gay,” hit the Internet, Collins broke a barrier. Before that sentence, the reception a gay NBA player would get from his peers and the public was a chilly, dark pool of unknowns. The decision entailed, among other things, surrendering his privacy, risking the disaffection and disapproval of his family, subjecting himself to flinching awkwardness from friends and teammates, and potentially, harming his livelihood.
Washington Wizards management could pat itself on the back for being “proud” of Collins on Monday, but before that all Collins had to go on for an example were the headlines from the NFL scouting combine, where some team executives asked draftees if they liked girls. The truth is, there are general managers who will quietly shy from Collins. Just as there are places where he will encounter purse-lipped distaste and judgment of those who hate-the-sin-but-love-the-sinner, and threatened haters who will want to beat the snot out of him for looking at them.
The main thing Collins did by coming out, to borrow a neat phrase from former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice, was to make “the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect.” Before Collins, out-ness was the third rail for male pro athletes. It was a boundary, with no-trespassing signs posted. A male athlete couldn’t come out because it would be an Achilles heel, a weakness, a vulnerability. It would destabilize the locker room, and everyone would think he was soft as a fern. Collins has now completely judo- flipped that stigma and stereotype. Gay isn’t weak, it’s strong -- just look at him. And look at his record: he’s played on a half dozen teams and appeared in the playoffs nine times in 11 years, and has a reputation as one of the best locker room guys in the league.
About 10 minutes after Collins came out in Sports Illustrated magazine on Monday, the chorus of approval he received was equal to a holiday parade. The White House saluted him, and former President Bill Clinton issued a statement of congratulations. Messages of support came from fellow players like Steve Nash, who gave him “maximum respect” on Twitter. All of which bordered on over-congratulations and provoked Freedom Center Fellow Ben Shapiro to the killjoy observation, “Collins is a hero? Our standard for heroism has dropped quite a bit since Normandy.”
But physical heroism and the moral kind don’t always go together – the Confederacy proved that. If you are tempted to ask how much guts it took for Collins to come out, you can answer that question by simply asking yourself another one:
If it was so easy, then why had no one done it before?
True, this wasn’t securing a beachhead, but when the first keystroke of his announcement, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. I’m also gay,” hit the Internet, Collins broke a barrier. Before that sentence, the reception a gay NBA player would get from his peers and the public was a chilly, dark pool of unknowns. The decision entailed, among other things, surrendering his privacy, risking the disaffection and disapproval of his family, subjecting himself to flinching awkwardness from friends and teammates, and potentially, harming his livelihood.
Washington Wizards management could pat itself on the back for being “proud” of Collins on Monday, but before that all Collins had to go on for an example were the headlines from the NFL scouting combine, where some team executives asked draftees if they liked girls. The truth is, there are general managers who will quietly shy from Collins. Just as there are places where he will encounter purse-lipped distaste and judgment of those who hate-the-sin-but-love-the-sinner, and threatened haters who will want to beat the snot out of him for looking at them.
The main thing Collins did by coming out, to borrow a neat phrase from former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice, was to make “the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect.” Before Collins, out-ness was the third rail for male pro athletes. It was a boundary, with no-trespassing signs posted. A male athlete couldn’t come out because it would be an Achilles heel, a weakness, a vulnerability. It would destabilize the locker room, and everyone would think he was soft as a fern. Collins has now completely judo- flipped that stigma and stereotype. Gay isn’t weak, it’s strong -- just look at him. And look at his record: he’s played on a half dozen teams and appeared in the playoffs nine times in 11 years, and has a reputation as one of the best locker room guys in the league.