It's not very often that I get to talk about social issues on this blog because this site primarily deals with basketball. But some big news (in my opinion) dropped this week because former NBA player John Amaechi is apparently announcing in his upcoming book Man In The Middle that he is gay.
ESPN is publishing the book, so they had the first story about Amaechi and his book. But also check out former SLAM Magazine editor Ryan Jones' take on it on SLAMonline.com. Jones went to college with Amaechi at Penn State and has his background info on Amaechi.
To me, this is one of those huge news stories in sports. I have a feeling it's going to get overshadowed in a few days by something of less importance, I'm not sure what, but something. And that's very unfortunate. This is big news.
But what the NBA, pro sports, and the America needs is for a current player in the NBA or one of the major sports to come out of the closet. Our country still has a problem with homosexuality and that is something that would help go a long way to making it more socially acceptable.
Why is that so? I'm not really sure, but sometimes sports has a way of doing that in our society. It goes back to the integration of sports a few decades ago. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Over the years, people became more tolerant of other races. No, it wasn't solely because of sports and yes, there is still racism today, but it is far less prevalent and sports definitely helped.
Someone can do that for homosexuality. Of course players back in the day couldn't hide their skin color like players today can hide their sexual preference. There have been homosexuals in the four major sports already, but all of them came out of the closet after their playing careers were finished.
I know it would be very, very difficult for someone to come out of the closet during their playing career. Players get heckled enough by fans on the road for other things, they get trash talked enough by other players, and hear tons of negative things from the media in sports radio, television and print media that it would practically be career suicide to come out.
But one of these days someone has got to make that sacrifice and help out the average homosexual citizens by coming out of the closet and making the country acknowledge that fact and say it's okay. Until then, nothing in this country is going to change people's attitudes and opinions.
