Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Basketball’s Gay Paragon - NYT | Jason Collins revela que es homosexual: Se convirtió en el primer enebeísta activo en hacer pública su homosexualidad - El Nuevo Día | NBA Player Says He is Gay - Voice of America | Support from all around world comes NBA player Jason Collins' way after he ... - Fox News | Gay rights group welcomes basketball player's coming out 30/04/13 00:18 from Uploads by AFP

Obama Calls Jason Collins, 'Impressed By His Courage' In Coming Out - Huffington Post - 4/29/2013

Jordan Schultz: Jason Collins Deserves Respect, But May Face Adversity From Fellow NBA Players - 4/30/2013 - Jordan Schultz

Collins gets lots of support at Stanford - 4/30/201

Jason Collins revela que es homosexual

Se convirtió en el primer enebeísta activo en hacer pública su homosexualidad

» NBA Player Says He is Gay - Voice of America
30/04/13 09:37 from Top Stories - Google News
IBNLive NBA Player Says He is Gay Voice of America A National Basketball Association player has become the first active player in a major professional U.S. team sport to reveal he is homosexual. Free-agent center Jason Collins revealed he ..

NBA Player Says He is Gay
30/04/13 05:48 from Voice of America
A National Basketball Association player has become the first active player in a major professional U.S. team sport to reveal he is homosexual. Free-agent center Jason Collins revealed he is gay in the cover article for this week's Sports I..

Support from all around world comes NBA player Jason Collins' way after he ... - Fox News
30/04/13 07:42 from world - Google News
FOXSports.com Support from all around world comes NBA player Jason Collins' way after he ... Fox News For the first time, a player still active in one of the four U.S. major pro sports leagues told the world he was gay, with Collins ch..

Gay rights group welcomes basketball player's coming out
30/04/13 00:18 from Uploads by AFP
Gay rights group welcomes basketball player's coming out Gay rights group the Human Rights Campaign welcomed Jason Collins's decision to become the first openly gay player in a major US professional team sport on M... From: AFP Vie..

Gay rights group welcomes basketball player's coming out

Published on Apr 29, 2013

Gay rights group the Human Rights Campaign welcomed Jason Collins's decision to become the first openly gay player in a major US professional team sport on Monday. Basketball player Collins made his announcement in a Sports Illustrated article. Duration:00:44

» Jason Collins' Coming Out Breaks New Ground For Gay Rights Trend - Huffington Post
29/04/13 18:54 from puerto rico sports - Google News
CTV News Jason Collins' Coming Out Breaks New Ground For Gay Rights Trend Huffington Post History was made in October 2012 when active professional featherweight boxer <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/orlando-cruz-c..

» Jason Collins' Coming Out Breaks New Ground For Gay Rights Trend - Huffington Post
29/04/13 18:54 from puerto rican community in new york - Google News
CTV News Jason Collins' Coming Out Breaks New Ground For Gay Rights Trend Huffington Post NEW YORK -- By coming out as gay while still an active NBA player, Jason Collins breaks one of the last remaining barriers for gays and lesbians ..

April 29, 2013

Basketball’s Gay Paragon

By FRANK BRUNI

I heard a lot of talk Monday about how “perfect” Jason Collins, the basketball player who just came out, is. Perfect as in straight from central casting. (Or maybe I should say gay from central casting.)

He went to college at Stanford. Roomed there with Joe Kennedy III. Was in the same class as Chelsea Clinton, who tweeted her congratulations to him for the courage she said he was showing.

Seven feet tall, he’s strapping even by the brawny standards of the National Basketball Association, and his designated role on the court, as a human roadblock against the most physically imposing opponents, is an aggressive one.

“I’m not proud of it, but I once fouled a player so hard that he had to leave the arena on a stretcher,” he writes in the cover article of the new Sports Illustrated, the one in which he becomes the trailblazer so many of us have been waiting for: the first active athlete in any of America’s four major professional sports leagues to acknowledge his homosexuality.

He mentions his Christian values. “I take the teachings of Jesus seriously, particularly the ones that touch on tolerance and understanding,” he says, getting in a deft dig at religious extremists. And he notes that he hopes to start a family of his own.

But none of these biographical details, none of these remarks, stayed with me the way the first paragraph of the article, whose co-author is the journalist Franz Lidz, did. It’s built from three short sentences:

“I’m a 34-year-old N.B.A. center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”

The gay part will now define him, in the public eye, more than any other. It will be the prompt for the loudest cheers he basks in and the nastiest jeers he sloughs off.

But in the opening paragraph, it comes after his age and occupation and race, getting no more space, in that one passage and for that brief moment, than other aspects of his identity. It’s a detail among many, but not the defining one.

That’s the integrated way that things should be, the unremarkable way a person’s sexual orientation ought to be lived and perceived. And that’s precisely what Collins and his fellow trailblazers are trying to move us toward: not a constant discussion of the rightful place and treatment of L.G.B.T. people in America, but an America in which the discussion is no longer necessary. He’s letting us focus on his gayness precisely so we can focus less on others’ down the road.

I point that out because I know that some conversation in the days to come, perhaps not public discussion but certainly private grumbling, will include questions about why Collins has to rock the boat, why the news media is paying such lavish heed to him and why gays and lesbians in general make such a fuss of things. I know this from my in-box, where some readers routinely tell me that they’d be less bothered by homosexuals if we’d just please shut up about it.

Many of us want to, and will: when a gay, lesbian or transgendered kid isn’t at special risk of being brutalized or committing suicide. When the federal government outlaws discrimination against people based on sexual orientation, which it still hasn’t done.

When immigration laws give same-sex couples the same consideration that they do heterosexual ones. When the Defense of Marriage Act crumbles and our committed relationships aren’t relegated to a lesser status, a diminished dignity.

When a Rutgers coach doesn’t determine that the aptly ugly garnish for hurling basketballs at his players’ heads is the slur “faggot.” When professional football scouts don’t try to ascertainthat potential recruits are straight.

When an athlete like Collins can be honest about himself without he and his co-author having to stress that he’s a guy’s guy, a godly man, someone who stayed mum about himself before now precisely so he wouldn’t disrupt his teams or upset his teammates, someone who’s inhabited locker rooms for 12 seasons already without incident.

When a gay person’s central-casting earnestness and eloquence aren’t noted with excitement and relief, because his or her sexual orientation needn’t be accompanied by a litany of virtues and accomplishments in order for bigotry to be toppled and a negative reaction to be overcome.

When being gay doesn’t warrant a magazine cover or a phone call from the president, any more than being 34 or being black does.

If you read all of Collins’s article, and you should, you’ll come away realizing that the gay part of him was and is so big only because his world — by which I mean America, and by which I mean pro sports — made it so.

From now on, he says, “I want to be genuine and authentic and truthful.” Those are adjectives and attributes also worth dwelling on.