Gay Athletes in the dressing room…Oh My

On February 15 Robbie Rogers, a member of League One soccer club Stevenage in England and a former U.S. international, announced on his blog that he was gay.

And then promptly quit.

Rogers, who spent five years in MLS with the Columbus Crew and made 18 appearances with the national team, said he decided to retire because he was “fearful” of how his teammates were going to react and he was worried about the treatment he would receive from opposition fans and the media.

(No professional soccer player has come out during his playing career and less than a handful have come out post retirement. One, former England U21 international Justin Fashanu, hung himself eight years after.)

"For the past 25 years I have been afraid, afraid to show who I really was because of fear. I always thought I could hide this secret," wrote Rogers, 25. "Football was my escape, my purpose, my identity. Football hid my secret, gave me more joy than I could ever have imagined."

Rogers has received plenty of positive feedback since his announcement, with athletes such as NBA star Steve Nash, former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling and NFL linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo offering their support, but not everyone is on his side on the issue.

Saneguy, an obviously sensitive troll who read about Rogers in the Toronto Sun, did support the player’s decision to retire, rather than subject teammates to a gay man in the dressing room.

“If I was to spend time in a female dressing room, I would get aroused just seeing people I am interested in sexually, nude. It's what happens and would obviously make the females uncomfortable. The same thing goes for men who are interested in other men sexually. It would make US normal men extremely uncomfortable.”

Now there was some disagreement to Saneguy’s opinion in the responses that followed that day, with one wag in particular calling Saneguy a “moronic homophobe.”

Well, that’s just not right, and his supporters let him know they had his back. A woman named Ann, who earlier in the thread thought she had the debate settled by noting that we have separate washrooms for men and women, took Saneguy’s attacker to task, calling him an “ever ignorant sodomizer.”

jj333 also came to Saneguy’s defence. “That's the one thing I detest about gays. Whenever a person doesn't bend over and agree with everything they say and do, they're a "homophobe."

Jj333 believed that staying in the closet would have been the better option.

“If he was worried about what the response would be, how the fans would feel or what the press would write, why not just keep your yap shut? I think that many times these people who ‘come out’ are looking for accolades...why not let your soccer skills speak for themselves? If I'm watching a game (any sport), I couldn't care less, nor think about, who is sleeping with whom! Get over yourselves!”

Surprisingly, jj333’s post drew criticism as well, and he was asked why he was so afraid of gays. After claiming that Rogers’ supporters were “intolerant” of other views, he then took the logical step to assume that any supporter of gay athletes in the dressing room must be, well, gay.

“Straight males have no ‘fear of gays.’ They are just repulsed at the thought of two males having sex...the same way you're repulsed at the thought of having sex with a woman. Does that make you afraid of women?

(Sigh)

It’s no wonder gay athletes stay in the closet with those kinds of attitudes among the fan base. But support for Rogers and others like him is not universal in the dressing rooms, either. Remember former Blue Jay Yunel Escobar and the homophobic slur (Tu ere Maricon) painted on his eye black?

Then there's 49er cornerback Chris Culliver, who gave us this grammatical gem just before the Super Bowl. “No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff. Nah … can’t be … in the locker room, man. Nah.”

So yah, we got a long way to go.

My experience in sports locker rooms as a reporter is limited and somewhat dated, but I’m thinking there are maybe one or two players on each team that would be strongly against gays in the room. Most of the players wouldn’t care, as long as their teammate did his job. And there would be a couple of players, with egos the size of the pay cheques, who just assumed the rest of the team always stared at their handsome self anyway, so what’s the fuss?

Rogers, who didn’t actually mention the ‘retirement’ word in his statement, may yet return to the game. But for now, he is “a free man” who is stepping away from his sport.

“It's time to discover myself away from football.”