How Many Famous Athletes Are Gay? — Vol. II

Please check out Vol.s I & III in the sidebar and click the Google +1 button above to help spread the word!
billy bean, chris dickerson, famous gay athletes, Gay Athletes, homophobia, john ameachi, mark tewksbury, matthew mitcham, pro sports, rudy galindo, gay celebrities, gays in the news, gays in sports, homosexual sports, queer athletes

The following quotes go to the heart of why gay athletes have trouble being honest with their teammates and why articles like this are necessary.

Garrison Hearst-San Francisco 49ers running back: “Aww, hell no! I don't want any faggots on my team. I know this might not be what people want to hear, but that's a punk. I don't want any faggots in this locker room."

Julian Tavarez-The Chicago Cubs pitcher after being booed by San Francisco fans said: “Why should I care about the fans? They're a bunch of assholes and faggots here.''

After NBA star center John Amaechi disclosed he was gay, NBA player Tim Hardaway said: "First of all I wouldn’t want him on my team. and second of all, if he was on my team I would really distance myself from him because I don’t think that’s right and I don’t think he should be in the locker room when we’re in the locker room. Something has to give, If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that's upset and can't concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it's going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate."


Can you picture Hardaway as a helpless defenseless virgin while that-that beast Amaechi had his way with him right there in the locker room and in front of his fellow team members too “worried” to come to his rescue? Can you imagine network television having to put an extra thirty-second delay on a telecast just in case Amaechi decided in the middle of the game that Hardaway was just ohhhh-so attractive that he might lose control and play grab-ass with him instead of making that crucial three pointer?

In the spirit of “your damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” LeBron James expressed a problem with closeted gays on his team saying, "With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy. So that's like the No. 1 thing as teammates — we all trust each other.... It's a trust factor, honestly. A big trust factor."

John Amaechi
Englishman John Amaechi didn’t even take up basketball until he was 17-years-old. It would be an understatement to say he’d entered the sport a little late in life, so people scoffing at him wanting to be an American basketball star would be considered reasonable. Of course if you’d ever met the 6-foot-ten, 270-pound athlete in person, it’d probably lessen the shock of his latter achievements.


Among his considerable list of accomplishments by the time he’d turned thirty, he’d crossed the Atlantic several times to become not only a famous European, but also a well-known American basketball star. The twice First Team Academic All-American for Penn State went on to become an undrafted NBA starter for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1995-96. He also played in

France and Italy. Amaechi is the only British player to be inducted into the U.S. Basketball Hall of Fam

e after incredible seasons in Cleveland, Orlando and Utah.

Among the four major American sports, John is only the sixth pro athlete to talk openly about being gay and the only one so far within the NBA. Averaging 6.2 points and 2.6 rebounds a game, Amaechi has proven that being a homosexual team player should be about as controversial as being left or right-handed.

Nowadays John is a British TV personality, helps run and fund the Amaechi Basketball Center in Manchester, and is a best-selling author for ESPN Books with his autobiography Man in the Middle.

In a way LeBron had a valid point a few paragraphs back, if you’re a team you should be able to trust each other with anything. A good example of how this actually helps a squad comes in the form of…

Brian Sims
After Sims left Bloomsburg University he became an unusual legend, as much for his athletic accomplishments, as for the fact that unless you knew him personally you’d never believe he was gay. If any stereotype fit him it’d be a college jock. Conversation leaned toward the coming game, the opponents strengths and weaknesses, which cheerleader might get lucky next, what professors he would like to sack in the parking lot, and where and when he wanted to turn pro. Sims was known for a lot of things, not the least of which was that he could bench press 225 pounds not 10, not 20 but nearly 40 times. He was captain of their Division II football team playing defensive tackle, and at a hulking 6 feet tall and 260 pounds, he wasn’t exactly what you’d call your clichéd “faggot” by a long shot.

Brian began feeling his attraction to other men back in junior high, but with two Army colonels for parents, it went without saying that he suppressed it as much as possible. Once he entered college and was out on his own, he gradually not only faced his sexual preferences, but also accepted them.

As Bloomsburg University began realizing that they could very likely clinch the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Championship, one of Sims’ ex-clandestine boyfriends decided on his revenge for being dumped… he convincingly informed quarterback Eric Miller that Bloomsburg’s team captain and all-conference defensive tackle was a homosexual. Miller kept the news to himself about his good friend, but whispers in the locker-room became rumors in the halls as more and more students were told.

As Brian’s roommates will verify, it wasn’t exactly easy confirming that the handsome first-team jock was gay. Especially with the steady stream of girls wandering in and out of his room at all hours of the day and night. After all, being gay isn’t whom you have sex with, but whom your hormones react to and whom you fall in love with. After all many closeted husbands with children and famous athletes of all kinds hide behind relationships with women—most ending in disastrous results.

As a very successful and long season progressed, the team knew that the last thing they needed was for one of their most crucial and key players to get sidelined worrying about how they felt about him, so they confronted him, told him they knew, supported him, and made sure he was confident that they were behind him 100 percent. No one avoided him in the locker room or shower, in fact if anything it brought them solidly together as a team, supporting each other as a fighting unit with one true interest and love… football.

As the championship match drew nearer, it even became a point of team pride and humor. Over-confident opponents who’d heard the rumors came and then left the field of battle knowing that they’d have to face their home fans after suffering a galling defeat at the hands of a team with a queer for a starting player who somehow was also a star all-conference tackle and its captain!

As fate would have it and despite Sims chalking up three sacks in the final game, Delta State took the national championship racking up a score of 63-34.

Brian Sims is now a successful lawyer connected with the Philadelphia Bar Association and works with the Pennsylvania legislation in matters of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Billy Bean
Baseball’s Billy Bean of the Tigers, Dodgers and Padres tied the record of four hits in his first time out as a major league player. The southpaw outfielder had a .226 batting average at 487 times at bat. As with Glenn Burke before him, Billy didn’t dare acknowledge his homosexuality. His coming out September 6, 1999 after he retired from eight years as a pro, landed him on the front page of the Sports section of the New York Times and as a guest on 20/20.

He enjoys life nowadays as an author of Going The Other Way, consultant and an openly gay TV personality. Billy has also spearheaded an effort to downplay “ex-gay” ministers who believe that forcing young boys to play sports will cure them of their homosexuality.

Rudy Galindo
Ice-skating has known and been proud of Rudy Galindo since his first championship in 1982. The mention of his name and sport however usually sends rednecks all over the country laughing, “That ain’t no real-man sport! Hell, my wife wears less sequins and makeup that them fags do!” To them I’m sure Rudy would challenge them to match his phenomenal physical strength, perseverance and athletic prowess to fly like he does, and then to land safely without killing themselves. Nor could they equal his dedication to the sport by stubbornly being back on the ice after a double hip replacement in 2003 mere weeks after the surgery and competing professionally the following April.

Galindo’s whirlwind career solidified itself when he took the U.S. National Novice Men’s Championship in 1982. He went on to partner with Kristi Yamaguchi to win several U.S. National Pairs Championships. He has also won or placed in several World Junior Men’s and Men’s Championships, and was a fixture on the Champions on Ice tour until it folded in 2007. All this despite being diagnosed a decade earlier as HIV+ in 1996.

Chris Dickerson
"To be a truly great champion you must be so dedicated that the sport becomes woven into the warp and woof of your life"
Chris was inducted into the IFBB Hall of Fame in 2000. Since his career began in 1965, he’s been Junior Mr. USA (Most Muscular,) Mr. New York State and Mr. California. In 1970 he became the first African-American AAU Mr. America. He has also been Mr. Universe, Mr. World, and just to make sure everyone was impressed with his 30-year career, at the age of 43 he became the oldest Mr. Olympia in 1982. He earned the 2008 Ben Weider Lifetime Achievement Award and his method of posing in competition is considered second to none as witnessed by this video.

On top of all that, he’s a respected opera singer.

Matthew Mitcham
Despite coming out publicly just before the Olympics, Australia’s openly homosexual golden boy Matthew Mitcham is living the life that gay American sports heroes can only dream of. Australia even issued a fifty-cent postage stamp in his honor the day after his Olympic triumph. Johnson and Johnson covered the expenses so that his lover Lachlan Fletcher could attend the games as a spectator. His being gay is such a non-issue in his home country; their media was shocked at some of the legal precautions he had to take while competing in other countries (particularly the middle east.) At one point he was asked to forgo his appearance on the Gay Pride float in Australia’s Mardi gras parade in order to appear on the local morning show’s instead!

Mitcham fever hit its peak during the Beijing Olympic Games’ 10m-platform event. There, Matthew knocked down what was then considered the undefeatable Chinese diving team and in the process earned the highest scoring dive in Olympic history with a perfectly executed 112.10-point back two and a half somersault with two and a half twists. Up until the last dive of the competition, China’s Zhou Luxin had a 30 point lead, but Matthew smashed it spectacularly beating his impressive 533.15 score with his own 537.95… all at the age of 20. A few months later he won the 2008 Diving Grand Prix, and was voted Australia Sportsman of the year for 2008 by his peers and fellow countrymen.

Because of the treatment that they get in their own countries, of the 11,028 athletes to compete in the Beijing Olympics, only eleven were out and proud gays. The odds are that that left approximately 1091 just as deserving gay athletes out in their cold closets.

Mark Tewksbury
"When you compete, you need to focus on your strength, but when you're in the closet, what you focus on is fear and vulnerability."

"The fear of rejection is the ultimate overriding factor that makes it really difficult to make yourself stand out in any way, and certainly in a way that might not be seen so positively by your teammates."

Amongst other things, Mark is known for doing something not many other athletes can do… break his own World Records. In fact at the Canadian Winter Nationals in Winnipeg he did it twice in two days… and without a high-tech body suit. By the time Tewksbury retired in 1992 he owned the 100m short-course backstroke and had earned six World Records in the event plus one short-course world record in the 200m backstroke. Aside from medaling for Canada in the 1988 Seoul and 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Mark also achieved good showings in the Pan Pacific Games from 1987 thru 1991.

Mark has earned several Canadian Athlete of the Year awards; including the prestigious Lou March Trophy, the Lionel Conacher Award, and the Norton H. Crow Award. He has also been inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, the Olympic Hall of Fame; he was named Canada’s Male Athlete of the Year and is in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

In 1996, Mark became an integral part of the International Olympic Committee that selected the site of the 2004 Summer Olympics, but became embroiled in a conflict over the treatment of Olympic Athletes and perceived corruption in the organization. In 1998 Mark disclosed his homosexuality and several months later resigned his position at the IOC, deciding instead to concentrate on his role of bringing the celebrated Gay Games/Out Games to Montreal; an event that he hosted in 2006.

Though his coming out did little to damage his athletic reputation, it cost him a very lucrative job as a motivational speaker because he was suddenly “too gay” despite his talent in the field that landed him the position in the first place. CBC Sports apparently didn’t agree and hired him as a play-by-play announcer and commentator at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Today Mark is involved with his own motivational speaking, has recently published his autobiography entitled Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock, is involved in Canadian politics and sits on the boards of several important Gay organizations like the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.

With so many asking me to do a sequel to my 2006 article How Many Famous Athletes are Gay, I began pondering why I’d written the original article in the first place. I believe that I was trying to get the general public to consider people like American pro football’s Esera Tuaolo, Dave Kopay, and Australian Rules’ Ian Roberts, in order to illustrate that all gay men aren’t sex-crazed, little-boy-chasing, limp-wristed fairy queens. Nor are lesbians like tennis greats Billy Jean King or Martina Navratilova all chopped-haired “bulls” that ride motorcycles and become ranking officers in the military.

According to Navratilova, fighting such destructive negative stereotypes is important where gay high school athletes are concerned, especially when they’re forming their own self-images. Many teenaged gay athletes have committed and/or attempted suicide through the years because of the treatment they received at the hands of their own teammates and coaches. When pro basketball player John Amaechi came out, Martina is quoted as saying of him and gay sports figures in general, "It's hugely important for the kids so they don't feel alone in the world. We're role models. We're adults, and we know we're not alone but kids don't know that," she said, referring to small-town gay athletes feeling alone. "He will definitely help a lot of kids growing up to feel better about themselves."

Referring to John Amaechi’s coming out, ex-pro defensive lineman Esera Tuaolo spoke of his similar public experiences before and after the disclosure of his own homosexuality, "What John did is amazing. He does not know how many lives he's saved by speaking the truth. Living with all that stress and that depression, all you deal with as a closeted person, when you come out you really truly free yourself,'' he said. "When I came out, it felt like I was getting out of prison."

Most American gays take offense at the local media making a point of only filming the stereotypical over-painted and glittered drag queens and “dykes on bikes” during annual Gay Pride parades. Why? Because more often than not, and like it or not, American gays and lesbians look and act like your typical next door neighbor, the popular high school linebacker, your office mate or even your best friend.

For more famous gay athletes check out volume I -> CLICK HERE!


For books by and about these great athletes, visit my store!

Please visit...

~ and ~




WARNING: Reproduction of the FIRST PARAGRAPH of this article is permitted as long as a link back to it is provided.
Reproduction of any part this article past the first paragraph is forbidden without the author's permission
©-2009 by Jet Gardner/Blogcritics.org

How Many Famous Athletes Are Gay?

Please check out Vol.s II & III in the sidebar and click the Google +1 button above to help spread the word!
famous gay athletes, football, Gay, Gay Athletes, Gay Games, Gay Olympics, heroes, homosexual, NCAA athletes, gay pro sports, professional gay athletes, gay soccer, queer sports, homosexual swimming, gay tennis, gay celebrities

How many current professional athletes are gay? An intriguing question, which for many reasons will probably never find reliable answers. Here's just a few good ones to consider. . .

From early on in high school sports, most athletic adolescent boys tend to seek out the weak in gym class to pick on, bully, and give verbal and physical abuse to. To them anyone who didn’t play sports were sissies and "fags" to be beaten up in school parking lots in front of their friends, so it was no wonder that openly gay pro athletes are rarely heard of, or from.

One of the heroes of Flight 93-September 11, 2001, was an out and proud athlete...
After learning of Mark Bingham's story (The gay rugby player that helped bring down Flight 93 before it hit the U. S. Capitol) I wondered what other sports pros out of the approximately 4,000 active in the U. S. had the guts to face the inevitable judgment and fan hatred by coming out. I was appalled to discover most had to wait till after their careers were over.

There’s no doubt in my mind that in all corners of professional and college athletics from boxing to football, the ranks are full of gays. You’ve just never heard of them. This also includes the ranks of coaches, owners or general managers.

The most plausible reason would be constant speculation of an opposing team’s sexuality as an insult among sports fans, some of which comb the web and enter discussion boards not only for information, but to start damaging rumors. A good example of this would be when sportswriter Skip Bayless publicly (and unfoundedly) speculated that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman was gay.

More examples can be found in professional sports athletes like Dave Kopay and Esera Tuaolo (football), Martina Navratilova, and of course the great Billie Jean King (tennis). Unfortunately because of the overzealous Taliban-style "religious-right"'s influence imposed on the U.S. in recent history, American athletes such as Aikman have suffered unfounded fan judgment whether they actually were gay or not. The situation has become just as serious as when entertainers and politicians were accused of being communists in the 1950s McCarthy "witch hunts". Just the mere mention of the word "commie" back then was enough for regular folk such as famous comedic actress Lucille Ball to lose their friends, and sometimes their jobs and homes.


The best illustration of why more don’t come out is shown by just looking at what one of the best athletes in history-Magic Johnson went through in 1991. He summoned the courage to announce that he had AIDS. Religious fanatics and hate mongers like Jerry Falwell loudly branded the virus as God's exclusive judgment on homosexuals. Suddenly Magic's fans didn’t care that he had a death-sentence disease. No, they were more obsessed with gasping repeatedly “Magic’s Gay?... a fag!?!” Which of course, he wasn’t.

A good example of how misguided hatred of gays in sports can affect the athletes themselves comes in the form of 6'6" 275-lb offensive lineman Ed Gallagher who played at the University of Pittsburgh from 1977-79. After years of fighting homosexual urges, in 1985 he gave in and slept with another athlete. The gut wrenching decision to finally admit to himself that he was gay was too much for him and two weeks later he tried and failed to take his own life by leaping off Valhalla's Kensico Dam on March 1, 1985.

The attempt left him a paraplegic. In an interview afterward, he said that he couldn’t resolve his inner conflicts of what he’d always been taught that a sports athlete was supposed to be versus his sexual urges, so rather than face his own self-loathing and the expected rejection and judgment of his fans, he decided to end his own life. He later went on to found “Alive to Thrive” to help others in his position. He died May, 4th 2005 of a heart condition.

Here is an honor roll of brave men and women who deserve respect for not only being honest with themselves and their fans about their sexuality, but whose lives were nearly destroyed because of that honesty.

Roy Simmons was an offensive guard between 1979 and 1983 for the New York Giants and Washington Redskins, who came out on The Donahue Show. He is one of only three NFL pros to acknowledge his homosexuality.

Back in 1975 David Kopay, a running back in the NFL between 1964 and 1972, came out of the closet three years after he retired. His 1977 autobiography The David Kopay Story became an instant best seller and flew off the shelves as sports fans got their first glimpse of a gay football star.

Kopay’s first lover was Washington Redskins all-star tight end Jerry Smith. From 1965-77 Smith caught 421 career passes and scored 60 touchdowns. He remained in the closet until he died in 1987, even after his affair was revealed in Kopay’s autobiography. Despite that revelation, he was still voted one of the greatest Redskins of all time in 2002.

In baseball, former A's/Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke is credited with being one of the inventors of the “high five.”

NBA player Jason Collins' coming out is notable, but the pioneer "Jackie Robinson" of sports gay rights belongs to Glenn. He tried to change sports culture three decades ago "but back then, unlike now, sports culture wasn't ready for a change.

Burke made no secret of his sexual orientation to the Dodgers front office, his teammates, or friends in either league. He also talked freely with sportswriters, though all of them ended up shaking their heads and telling him they couldn't write that in their papers. Burke was so open about his sexuality that the Dodgers tried to talk him into participating in a sham marriage. (He wrote in his autobiography that the team offered him $75,000 to go along with the ruse.) He refused. In a bit of irony that would seem farcical if it wasn't so tragic, one of the Dodgers who tried to talk Burke into getting "married," was his manager, Tommy Lasorda, whose son Tom Jr. died from AIDS complications in 1991. To this day, Lasorda Sr. refuses to acknowledge his son's homosexuality.

Burke also died of AIDS-related causes in 1995.

Glenn came out publicly in a 1982 Sports Illustrated article — three years after he was released from his contract with the A’s. It was rumored that he was traded to the A’s because he was gay. The hatred and depression of being forced to end his career at 26 led to drugs and he wound up a street person in the San Francisco Bay area, dying alone and broke.

Other needless past tragedies include:


Big Bill” Tilden, who was considered a tennis legend, an athlete on par with the likes of Tiger Woods today, and a much sought-after celebrity in the 1920s. In 1949 he was declared one of the most outstanding athletes of the first half-century by the National Sports Writers Association. He won seven U. S. clay court titles, seven U. S. Opens, three Wimbledons, six U. S. doubles championships and holds the Davis Cup record for eleven appearances in a challenge or final round.

Behind the scenes Tilden wasn’t careful enough with his “secret” and in his celebrity and fame thought he was secure with his fans’ support. He began intimating to his close friends that he was gay and soon after a behind the scenes conspiracy began to discredit him and ruin his reputation.

In 1953 he died dirt poor in a one-room walk-up apartment alone and forgotten.

In 1988 Justin Fashanu was a British star soccer player. Bigots began spreading rumors that he had an ongoing sexual affair with two British cabinet ministers in an attempt to ruin both their careers-not caring what it did to his. Justin's career and self-worth were so devastated that 10 years later they found him in an abandoned garage in East London; the 36-year-old master athlete hung himself after an obsessed fan in Maryland claimed he assaulted him. The charges later were proven false.

On the other hand there have actually been some semi-happy endings:


Esera Tuaolo, the huge veteran of the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, and Atlanta Falcons appeared on an October 2002 episode of HBO's Real Sports. Upon seeing this, San Francisco 49ers running back Garrison Hearst was quoted as publicly announcing “I don’t want any faggots on my team,” and later had to apologize for it.

Before making peace with the negative reactions Tuaolo had considered suicide after bouts of depression and intense loneliness. Fortunately with the help of some of his former teammates, a concerted effort of the gay and lesbian community to stand by him, and his lover, Esera now leads a happy life.


Does anyone not know the name Martina Navratilova the tennis great who came out as a lesbian in the New York Daily News in 1982?

Billie Jean King has been a household name for decades, and rightfully so.

The unmatched and incredible Billie won twenty Wimbledon titles, helped create and start the Women’s Tennis Association, was named the Associated Press’s Woman Athlete of the year in 1967 and 1973, was named "Sports Illustrated’s 1972 “Sportsperson of the Year,” and Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year for 1976. In front of 30,472 cheering fans packing the Houston Astrodome and 50 million TV viewers, she beat tennis hustler and former champion Bobby Riggs in what was billed as the ultimate tennis “Battle of the Sexes.”

She was forced out into the Gay Rights forum when her ex-lover sued her for “Galimony,” which fortunately didn’t seem to hurt her career at all.

According to an April 12, 2005 Sports Illustrated poll, sports fans are far more accepting of lesbians in sports than gay men. Overall though, in the same poll 86 percent of Americans think that openly gay male athletes should be able to play in team sports. However, the poll went on to say that 68 percent of respondents think it hurts an athlete’s career to be openly gay.

Thankfully and apparently, outside the borders of the United States, the religious bible beaters have a lot less influence. With rare exceptions these days, most overseas gay men have found acceptance in the world of sports.

Voted fourth in “Total Sport’s” 10 Toughest Men Of Sport list, popular Australian gay rugby star/turned actor Ian Roberts came out in 1995 while still currently at the top of his macho game. He’d played front rower in 85 games for South Sydney, over 100 in Manly, and at the age of 23 was the highest paid rugby league player in the world.

The other players on the North Queensland Cowboys shrugged his sexual revelation off as no big deal and his fans followed suit. In a 1996 interview Roberts is quoted as saying:

"I take offense at the old locker room argument which assumes a man cannot, in any circumstances, control his urges. Any self-respecting human being can respect the rights and ways of another human being. The idea, then, that gays can convert, or want, heterosexual guys, is ludicrous. We want to play the game, not the field."

Despite expectations of a drop in his popularity, Roberts held/has several well-paid endorsement contracts. He even posed nude in a gay magazine, with no ill effects to his career, becoming a sex symbol “down under” for both men and women, and has gone on to a successful acting career after retiring from sports.

Greg Louganis is arguably one of the best male divers of all time, winning four gold medals between the 1984 and 1988 Olympics. His career ended after famously hitting his head on a diving board at the 88 Olympics, forcing him to reveal he had AIDS out of concern for the other athletes. His autobiography "Breaking the Surface" and subsequent movie have made him a legend and a sought after celebrity.

In 1968 army physician Dr. Tom Waddell came in sixth at the Olympic decathlon. He and his lover Charles Deaton were thrust into the spotlight in 1976 by being the first gay partner/lovers to appear in the “Couples” section of People magazine. Tom went on to form plans for the “Gay Olympic Games” stirring up controversy and lawsuits because of the use of the word “Olympics” in the title. Renamed the “Gay Games,” they first took place in San Francisco in 1982 and since then has grown to feature officially recognized athletic events and record holders, and it boasts participation of thousands of gay and straight registered athletes every four years.

Laughably many straight athletes entered thinking they’d have an easy time of it, only to be proven wrong, then later joined because of the challenge.

A gold medallist in the 800-meter freestyle relay at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, Bruce Hayes came out of the closet at the 1994 Gay Games winning seven gold medals there and setting several recognized master’s swimming records.

Body building legend Bob Paris from Indiana won the 1983 Mr. America and Mr. Universe bodybuilding titles. He went on to marry his long-time lover Rod Jackson changing their names to Jackson-Paris and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss it after coming out of the closet in the July 1989 issue of Ironman magazine. He went on to write several books including his autobiography "Gorilla Suit: My Adventures in Body Building" in 1997.

24-year-old Dutch swimming sensation Johan Kenkhuis, a silver metal winner in the Athens Summer Olympics in the four-man 100-meter freestyle relay, came out in 2004 by mentioning to the press that his boyfriend of four years would be watching him compete.

In all nine other athletes came out of the closet during the games in support. For him it wasn’t a big deal, nor was it in his homeland where gays have been treated equally for decades.

It’s refreshing to see that in other parts of the world the only thing that matters is how you do your job, perform your task, or excel in your sport. If only that were the case in the sports world here in the up-tight United States, but sadly it's not.

This article continues with more famous athletes in Vol II-CLICK HERE to go to it!

WARNING: Reproduction of the FIRST PARAGRAPH of this article is permitted as long as a link back to it is provided.
Reproduction of any part this article past the first paragraph is forbidden without the author's permission
©-2006 by Jet Gardner/Blogcritics.org