I’m fine with “gays” (but not everyone else is)
My interest in sports is pretty much zero, so if it hadn't been for "Mr. Jelliffe":http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6944 I probably would have never noticed the "Sports Illustrated poll":http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/magazine/04/12/survey.expanded/?cnn=yes about people's feelings about gay athletes. It's a little like a tarot reading, some of the results are possibly a little interesting if you could interpret them, although nothing is necessarily shocking.
Here's a few snippets.
Question Agree Disagree Openly gay athletes should be excluded from playing team sports 14% 86% Gay marriage would go against my religious beliefs 55% 38% It is a sin to engage in homosexual behavior 44% 46% Homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society 61% 33% 21% feel it is not ok for gay athletes to participate in sports if they are open about being gay.
22% feel "uncomfortable" when around homosexuals. ( the feeling is mutual. )
65% of Republicans "disagree" that Americans should enter into discussion about homosexuality and sports.
Some of the questions I'm not even sure about, like is it a sin? I don't know? What defines a sin? But seems to mostly go along with my theory that the majority of people don't really care, they may have an opinion if you ask them or think it's an odd choice to be homosexual, but more important is the freedom to make that choice if you want to. Kind of like at the beginning of the civil rights movement when they stopped taking the bus and the white woman would secretly give them rides but then not tell any of the other white women. It also seems there's this 20-30% range of religious "people that think":http://billionairesforbush.com/index.php that "their religious laws":http://www.yourgoingtohell.com/homo.html come before "people's right":http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am1 to be free of them.
If an athlete doesn't want to make their sexuality part of their career, I guess part of me can understand that. It's really none of anyone else's business. And heterosexuals never have to go through this thing where they divulge some personal piece information about what they do in bed and then have to sit through everyone's reaction to it. Heterosexual athletes can easily go their whole career without once being asked for thoughts on how their sexuality relates to football.
But I also feel in some way they are doing the world a disservice by letting anyone who wants to think all their sports heros are straight. It allows their ignorance to go uncorrected, and ignorance is both the root of so many evils and one of the easier to correct.