I realize that I owe two 12-game recaps and a season post-mortem (which I wish I didn't have to write this soon...), but today is not the day for those.
Today, was a very, very significant day for sports in North America. It was also a very personal, very emotional day for me and other athletes and former-athletes like me. Jason Collins has come out as gay, and in the process has changed the landscape of locker rooms all over the continent. As with any upheaval of this nature, there will be rough roads ahead. Acceptance is not going to be universal at the start, and it's not going to be easy everywhere, or at every level. But this is a HUGE step forward, because as young athletes look up to their heroes in the pro ranks, they emulate the behaviour they see there. And the behaviour from many in the NBA has been, to be honest, far better than I'd ever anticipated.
You see, most of the reaction from NBA players has been very positive and very supportive. And this will reverberate through all levels. Kids who idolise Steve Nash will take his "Maximum respect" for Collins to heart, and potentially express the same for a teammate on their high school team. Not everyone is thrilled, obviously.
A couple of sports media talking heads (their names aren't worth mentioning in my blog) have been vocal and have run religion up as their shield for deflecting criticism. However, I was raised a Christian, too. I was raised in a church that taught me that we are all God's children, and we were all made in his image; gay or straight, cis- or transgendered. Hearing this from my minister when I went through confirmation as a kid was significant in removing the religious barrier from my self-acceptance. These cowards use a perverse form of their faith to defend the indefensible. The fact that there are networks giving voice to their hatred is even less defensible.
So, on this day, I dedicate this space in my hockey blog to a basketball player, when I put basketball slightly over pro wrestling in my realm of personal sports loves, and below curling or cricket. Jason Collins stood up today and proved to the North American sports fan that it take a REAL man to come out as a gay man in professional team sports. For that, I want to embrace the man. He is a real hero to many LGBT athletes and former-athletes on this day. And hopefully soon there will be a second, a third, a tenth, a fiftieth; until such time that it's no longer significant that the men we root on; be it on the diamond, the pitch, the ice, the hardwood or the gridiron; just happen to love other men.
Jason Collins, you rock. May your free agency this summer be uneventful, and you play out your career on your terms.
