This past April, Rick Welts, CEO and President of the Phoenix Suns, had a meeting with David Stern, Commissioner of the National Basketball Association. Welts revealed he was gay and intended to go public with the news. Stern's reaction threw Welts ... he already knew. So far the team hasn’t fled for fear of Welts sneaking peaks at them in the shower, or of him potentially changing their uniforms to lavender short-shorts with pink piping up the sides.
A week later, Kobe Bryant had a technical foul called on him and responded by loudly calling the referee a faggot. Then on a June 30 call-in talk radio show, the Philadelphia Eagles’ DeSean Jackson referred to a caller as a “… gay ass faggot.”
Even though the 1-in-10 ratio is commonly accepted among gays, according to a recent UCLA study, anywhere from 3.5% to 11% of people in the U.S. are gay or gay leaning; but for the sake of argument let's put it at 1 in 50 ... and apply those odds to how many members of NCAA and professional sports teams there are. The issue is inevitably going to come down to this: Sooner rather than later a popular American athlete like Dartmouth’s Andrew Goldstein on a major team is going to come out of the closet while still an active player. When that happens the issues won’t be whether his teammates run like screaming virgins from the showers or if the fans abandon the team. The issues will instead be related to familiarity.
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Complete article at Blog Critics : http://bit.ly/nEL1WG
