The Last Frontier?

I realize that the media is always looking for the next big story about overcoming societies prejudices and bias but the media is going overboard today.

Two stories broke today about gays in sports, one somewhat significant the other not really news at all.

The first one I saw was that Will Sheridan had come out as gay. For those who don't remember, Sheridan was a pretty good power forward for Villanova. His story is pretty straightforward, when he came out to his team, they were cool with it and most of the opposing crowds didn't make an issue of it except for the scholars at St. Joe's. Granted, it wasn't all easy, his father didn't speak to him for a year after he was told. Aside from that though, his revelation doesn't seem so traumatic. There will always be people who criticize you for something you are, especially in a sports arena.

Looking at it objectively, Sheridan's story seems like a victory for society. A visible athlete comes out of the closet as gay and is met with mostly acceptance and indifference. Isn't that what we are looking for as a society? Knowing that there is always that small percentile who will hate for no good reason, isn't indifference and acceptance what we should want? I think so.

That's what makes the next story so needlessly publicized.

Today Phoenix Suns President Rick Welts also came out of the closet as gay, believed to be the first high ranking sports official to come out of the closet. I understand how in the testosterone fueled world of pro sports that coming out as gay as an active player is treacherous business but are we supposed to believe that being a paper pushing office worker is so high stakes that being the first gay one to come out is groundbreaking because it's tangentially related to sports? This seems about as relative as the first gay beer vendor coming out of the closet.

This isn't to minimize the importance of the event for Welts however. I'm sure I don't have any idea what it's like to feel like you had to hide something like that, although I suspect being a Republican in college is a similar burden. My only question is why do we need a breaking news ticker to announce that a paper pushing bureaucrat is gay? Surely if the star athlete, black guy from the mean streets of Philly can get through being gay relatively unscathed, the lilly white executive in Tucson should be a yawner.

I know it goes against all the liberal sensibilities but we should really take a small victory lap here. Public acceptance of gays is pretty high these days. Nothing ever gets 100% accepted but when people shrug their shoulders at the news that you're gay, that's the sign of progress. If gay marriage is what's making this perception of intolerance persist then that's unfortunate. That's an issue that has become a political and religious wedge issue despite that fact that it has no practical impact on society these days.

I guess the last true frontier is for an openly gay, active major leaguer to come out. Even that is probably scarier in theory than in reality. Whenever these ex-players come out as gay, most of their teammates seem to have figured it out already. Hopefully the positive, non-reaction to today's dual outings will convince any gay that they can just be gay and that they have reached a level of acceptance where it is no longer required to hold a press conference for such a thing. I think most people are there already.