Rumored gay athletes
Articles, tips, miscellany
CHANGES IN THE WIND
Thoughts on Gay Sports History for the 1998 Gay Games
by Patricia Nell Warren
For me, at age 32 in 1968, distance running started out as a personal female disagree. Indeed, the runner's need to get to deep inside and "find more" spurred my self-discovery as a woman and my consciousness-raising concerning women's rights. Only then, through running, could I finally catch up with those long-festering questions about sexual orientation. It dawned on me that sports are a major arena in which American society hard-wires "traditional" notions about gender roles and orientation into its citizens.
In the words of Bob Dylan, change was "blowing in the wind" of an America convulsed with all kinds of rights of issues. I was in the middle of it -- one of a number of women outlaw runners trying to break into the 26.2-mile male-owned marathon.
As an adjunct to the civil-rights movement, the "athletes' rights movement" was battling the antiquated and hypocritical rules that still ran U.S. athletics. The U.S. denied their amateur athetes any opportunity to benefit from sport -- and sent them into competition with c
8 Athletes Rumored To Swing Both Ways And 7 Rumored To Be In The Closet
In today's society more people are more comfortable coming out of as LGBT than 20 or 30 years ago. It goes the same for athletes many athletes have come out in recent years. For example when Michael Sam came out before the NFL Draft he was criticized because some teams didn't hope the media distraction signing him would provide. At least that's the reason they said. He was selected by the St. Louis Rams but he was cut before the regular season. After a short stint on Dallas's practice squad, he went to the CFL, only playing in oner game. While sports have come a long way in accepting those of unlike backgrounds and sexualities, there's still a lot of work to be done.
They're are athletes today who still remain in the closet and won't come out because of the scrutiny they could face. Athletes in team sports are further discouraged, because some teams view an sportsman coming out as a media distraction. With roughly 10% of the population identifying as LGBT, there are many rumors floating around that many of these athletes fall in that spectrum, but have chosen to keep it hidden. Here are eight athletes ru
He wonders where all the years went.
It has been 23 NFL seasons since Kopay, a running back for five teams in nine seasons, stunned the sports earth by coming out as a gay. He was the first major professional team-sport athlete to do so, but few have followed. Guard Roy Simmons, who played 58 games for the Giants and Redskins from 1979-83, came out on the Phil Donahue Reveal in 1992, but that was it.
"I'm the token queer,'' Kopay muses. "I'm it.''
The belief that somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the general population is homosexual suggests that 75 to 150 of the NFL's 1,500 players are closeted.
| Troy Aikman has denied persistent rumors he is gay. |
"Think about this,'' says Atlanta wide receiver Terance Mathis. "You may have three, four gay guys on your team and not even know it.''
Says Kopay, "Of course, that is what I want to believe, and yet I don't se
Sports Stars Who Battled Lgbtq+ Rumors
It feels enjoy LGBTQ athletes shouldn't be a big deal in 2017. However, for a lot of sports stars, their sexuality is either kept quiet, closeted, or the subject of some completely bogus conjectures. These stars were all rumored to be gay ... and only a several of them actually are.
Michael Sam
NFL hopeful Michael Sam came out as gay to his University of Missouri teammates in 2013, then to ESPN as an "openly arrogant gay man" just before the NFL draft in 2014, making him the first openly gay male to be drafted by an NFL team. His decision to come out at the time because he had "sensed that rumors were circulating," according to the New York Times.
Still, despite his heroic statements, he now thinks that coming out injure his career, and he may be right: Sam was the first SEC Defensive Player of the Year in eight years drafted outside the first round — waiting until the seventh round for the St. Louis Rams to pick him up (and that was just eight picks before entity entirely shut out). Soon the Rams cut him and he landed a spot on the Dallas Cowboys practice squad before retiring in 2015 to focus on his mental hea