They May Slap Each Other's Butts, But Are They Gay?

You know they're out there. The gay male pro athletes, grunting and sweating and spitting and running and crashing and hurling, right now, acting all manly and tough and rugged and heroic on the field or on the court.
And they're signing autographs and getting themselves all beloved by largely homophobic 'Murkin men and swooning 'Murkin boys and even handfuls of women as they jam the secret of their sexuality way, way down and go on raking in their millions, leading their lives of quiet, albeit loaded, desperation.
Do the math, baby: There are 25 players on a Major League Baseball team roster, and there are 30 teams. That's a total of 750 spittin', groin-scratchin' men. For the NBA, it's 12 players and 30 teams, totaling 360 really tall dudes who can no longer wear excess bling. For the NFL, the numbers shoot way up: about 45 players each, across 32 teams, totaling nearly 1,440 hulking hunks of pummeled meat.
So then, for the big three 'Murkin sports alone, not including hockey or soccer or water sports and not including minor league baseball or college hoops or college football (all of which are also, of course, enormous hotbeds of homoerotic heat, which would add another few thousand to the total, but let's stay national here), we're looking at a grand total of well over 2,500 male pro athletes, all sharing locker rooms and showers and sweat and intimate moments and you really want to sit there and tell me at least a dozen of these guys aren't right now closeted homosexuals? Bisexual? Something? Please. Get over it.
It is, of course, the last cultural frontier. The modern psychosexual threshold demarcating where we as a homophobic sports-lovin' culture simply refuse to allow ourselves to go, given how pro sports is a multigazillion-dollar industry and how no way in hell would a male sports fan (or team owner or sponsor) stand for a gay sports hero. No. Freaking. Way. If it happened, there would be fear, hate and mistrust. Other players would shun, recoil and cry. Sponsors would flee. Alabama would implode. The red states would spontaneously combust. Just the way it is.
Sure, WNBA MVP and three-time Olympian Sheryl Swoopes can come out and admit she's a lesbian and no one really gasps all that loudly because, well, it's the WNBA, and she's a woman, and it wasn't much of a secret anyway, and -- perhaps the biggest reason of all that her coming-out story is a nonstarter -- it's not about manhood.
Think about it. No male fan in his sticky armchair is right now saying, "Gul-dangit, my image of the WNBA is totally shattered, shattered I tell you, my manhood's threatened and my Budweiser supply is endangered and what the hell is happening with the sports that define my beer-bellied soul?" It just ain't happening.
But it does bring up the bigger, stickier and more fascinating issue of gay male pro athletes, and why it's still such a viciously loaded topic, and when it will finally be tackled (It's inevitable, of course. Not if, but when. And, of course, who. And how soon thereafter he will be shot.).
Why the absolute terror of a gay male sports star? And why so different from the lesbian version? Simple: because accomplishment in male sport lies in direct proportion to virility. Touchdown equals manliness. Slam dunk equals large penis. Home run equals steroid -- er, prowess. There is a very straight (ahem) line between male athletic ability and the theoretical ability to satisfy 20 women in five minutes. Take that macho illusion away, and men will simply crumble. The veil will be lifted. There will be no "pure" male culture, nowhere for boys to turn. Except maybe bowling. Or bass fishing.
Pro sport is the last frontier. After all, there are openly gay rock stars. There are openly gay writers and gay filmmakers and a handful of gay actors (though, of course, none who get straight roles) and gay airline pilots and even a few gay politicians, along with plenty of gay soldiers in the U.S. military who don't ask and don't tell and who die just as ruthlessly and brutally in Bush's repulsive pet wars.
There is only one way it can happen. Only one way America and its sports-drunken, gay-fearin' men would ever reluctantly, grudgingly accept a gay sports star, and that's if said star was already a king of his sport, a true superstar, a Michael Jordan or Barry Bonds or Peyton Manning, Tim Duncan or Michael Vick or Roger Clemens.
You know, big. Manly. Amazing talent. Stats so impressive and feats so astounding and records so undeniable that they cannot be dismissed and the grunting fans will have to say, "Well yeah, he may be gay, but man that guy can play, and I shall accept him because he's a great competitor."
And then that odd mutation will occur in the culture where it becomes suddenly, weirdly cool for normally homophobic sports fans to like and even defend the gay athlete, because, hey (the fan will realize), accomplishment trumps sexual orientation, and sexuality has no bearing on talent (or for that matter, on anything else), and it doesn't seem to threaten his manhood, so maybe, just maybe, it doesn't have to threaten mine.
I know, it seems impossible. But someday soon, a major, celebrated athlete who is currently active and at the top of his sport (this is vital) will have the nerve to come out, to take the risk and live his life truthfully. And he will be celebrated and championed and shatter all prejudices. Either that, or he will be savaged and destroyed. He will be killed, then eviscerated, then set on fire, then beheaded. And then it will get ugly.
Either way, he will break new ground. He will finally explode the stereotype. He will allow in a shaft of open-minded light into an otherwise viciously defended, all-male homophobic stronghold and maybe, just maybe, progress can be made and barriers can be broken and awareness can rise and our uptight gender issues can evolve, just a little, as the sports in question, meanwhile, will be exactly no worse for it, and might just even improve. Hey, it could happen.
It might be, I realize, too much to ask in our lifetime. It might be too much to ask of our rigid, God-drunken, neocon-hammered culture. As such, I also realize that the ultimate dream for progress and how we think of gender as it relates to American sports is probably way too much to ask, too. But, hey, it sure is fun to imagine the effects of an openly gay NASCAR driver, isn't it?
from San Francisco Chronicle