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Chris Kluwe, the National Football League punter who has been an outspoken advocate for LGBT equality both inside and outside sports, announced Thursday that he will sign a one-year contract with the Oakland Raiders. Kluwe played the previous eight seasons for the Minnesota Vikings before being cut earlier this month after the Vikings selected a punter in the 5th round of April’s NFL Draft.

Kluwe, incidentally, is moving from one state that just passed marriage equality (Minnesota) to one where same-sex marriage is still illegal (California), and he told fellow LGBT ally Brendon Ayanbadejo that he will remain an advocate for LGBT rights when he joins the Raiders, Ayanbadejo wrote on FOXSports.com:

Kluwe is known for his mind and mouth, as well as his leg. He is a vocal advocate of equality in sports (and life), and says he will continue to speak for what he believes.

“I’m still going to be myself socially and continue to tweet and interact with my fans,” Kluwe said.

Kluwe and Ayanbadejo were both released by their teams this spring, immediately fueling speculation around the sports world that their advocacy had been a factor in the teams’ decisions. Even Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) weighed in when Kluwe was cut, saying, “Yeah, I don’t feel good about it,” an implication that Kluwe’s outspokenness played a role in his release. Others raised similar questions when the Baltimore Ravens released Ayanbadejo.

Though Ayanbadejo remains unsigned, Kluwe’s new contract should put those concerns to rest. The reality is that the release of both players looked more like business decisions — Kluwe was due $1.45 million in 2013, nearly $1 million more than the Vikings will pay his rookie replacement. Ayanbadejo, meanwhile, was an aging 36-year-old linebacker who primarily played special teams, and considering that the Ravens handed out a record contract to quarterback Joe Flacco, his $940,000 salary at an easy-to-replace position made him expendable (he was hardly the only prominent Raven to fall victim to cost-cutting this offseason).

And as as Cyd Zeigler argued at OutSports when the Vikings cut Kluwe, immediate speculation without evidence that advocacy played a role in their releases can be counterproductive to the cause they are pushing, Ayanbadejo, Kluwe, and other players have fought to make the NFL a more open and inclusive place both for advocates of LGBT rights and for gay players. But painting football as a place where those voices still aren’t welcome, where speaking out carries the penalty of losing one’s job, only encourages allies to remain quiet and gay players to stay in the closet. And it ignores the progress the league as made. Despite hiccups along the way, the NFL has indeed become a more open place: not only are Kluwe and Ayanbadejo speaking out, but so are both NFL Players Association president Dominque Foxworth and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and the league has strengthened its efforts to rid the game of discrimination and homophobia.

If evidence existed that Kluwe and Ayanbadejo’s advocacy played a role in either situation, it should be publicized, shamed, and subject to the league’s non-discrimination policy. It’s far more likely, though, that Kluwe and Ayanbadejo were cut because football, as Zeigler explained, “is a numbers game.” Making legitimate business decisions doesn’t make a football team discriminatory, and treating legitimate business decisions as discriminatory only ensures that football will remain in the shadows of tolerance for far longer than it should.

Two of sports’ most outspoken advocates for marriage equality filed a brief with the Supreme Court Thursday, asking it to reaffirm a lower court’s decision that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage by ballot referendum in 2008.

“When we advance the idea that some people should be treated differently because of who they are, demeaned in public as lesser beings, not worthy of the same rights and benefits as others despite their actions as good citizens and neighbors, then we deny them equal protection under the laws,” Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo wrote in the brief. “America has walked this path before, and courageous people and the Court brought us to the right result. We urge the Court to repeat those actions here.”

Kluwe and Ayanbadejo, who have both argued for LGBT equality in both sports and America as a whole, also argued in the brief that their roles as prominent athletes matters in setting an example for all Americans, and that the Supreme Court should relish the similar role it has:

These athletes understand that, because of their public stature, the consequences flow naturally from their actions even if they cannot see the consequences. Consequences of being a role model and leader. Consequences for young children and adults who mimic our behavior when they interact with other children and adults. Those consequences flow because children and adults want to “Be Like [insert athlete name here].” Athletes are learning that they can no longer say “I am not a role model”— that they are forced to be a role model and privileged to be a role model, and that their words and actions, no matter how innocently intended, are magnified for both good and bad. If a professional basketball or football player says something is “gay,” young boys on the playground will copy and magnify the statement. If a hockey player says homosexuals are not welcome in the locker room, a young girl will shun a teammate who she thinks may be gay—where that teammate was until then a bright, happy, smart, and promising kid. After, she will be afraid of being who she is, and will takes steps, even dire steps, to avoid it.

But if a Pro Bowler treats a teammate as being an equal who is worthy of his friendship and respect because that other person is a good friend who places the team before himself, then high schoolers in Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, and Minnesota will not—cannot—miss that example. If that Pro Bowler speaks out publicly and kindly, kids will hear it and feel it. Kids who are already dealing with everything youth throws at them will know they can treat others as friends and equals, and those others will know they are equal and that, without question, it is better to be themselves than to be hurt. They will follow the credo, “Live on, and be yourself.”

The argument that sports matter as a driver in social change is not novel, but it is a new feature in the debate for marriage equality. Sports have led civil rights fights in the past, but when it comes to equality for LGBT Americans, sports have largely been absent from the fight.

That is beginning to change, thanks in large part to athletes like Kluwe and Ayanbadejo. There still isn’t an out man in American professional sports, but three of the four major leagues have added sexual orientation to their non-discrimination clauses in labor negotiations, and as this week demonstrated, the prospect of violating those agreements is not taken lightly by players’ unions or leagues. Teams across leagues have participated in the “It Gets Better” campaign and leagues have set up organizations to push for equality. And players’ attitudes are slowly beginning to change, even if they are sometimes forced to. When San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said he wouldn’t welcome a gay teammate the week before the Super Bowl, he was swiftly rebuked by his teammates and former players, and he attempted to make up for it by volunteering at an LGBT charity. Two years after Kobe Bryant called an NBA official a “fucking fag,” he has taken to rebuking Twitter users who use similar slurs.

Those attitude changes matter because sports, as leisurely and casual as we sometimes view them, often act as a powerful driver of social change. American professional sports integrated at least a decade before the Civil Rights Movement took off, and even after the movement began, athletes marched with civil rights leaders and exposed racial injustices on podiums at the Olympics. Athletes like Muhammad Ali fought both racial inequality and the plagues of war; athletes like Billie Jean King were central in the fight for equal rights for women. The sports world, if not Kluwe and Ayanbadejo themselves, may be late to the fight for LGBT equality. But that doesn’t mean they can’t, and won’t, still have a similar impact.

Salon’s named Vikings punter and marriage equality advocate Chris Kluwe its sexiest man of the year–the publication always picks someone substantive to counter the influence of the People’s Sexiest Man issue, which this year honored my beloved Channing Tatum–and Tracy Clark-Flory has a fun interview with him about everything from homophobia in sports to gaming miniatures. But I was particularly struck by this passage where Kluwe describes where he developed the voice he’s put to such politically effective use:

I have to admit it: I admired the immensely creative cursing in your now infamous letter to delegate Emmet C. Burns Jr. Can you teach me how to swear like you?

It’s actually very simple: You have to hang out on online gaming message boards for about six or seven years and get into a lot of arguments.

So that was your training ground.

With the whole arguing on message boards, I found a very effective style was to present a carefully reasoned, thought-out argument and highlight it with really kind of bizarre swear words where you stop for a moment and go, “What does that even mean?” It’s the juxtaposition between the two. The swear word sticks in your head but you think on it and you realize there was a point too.

There’s been a lot of talk of late here, and elsewhere in the geek-o-sphere, about the worst representatives of video gaming culture. But Kluwe’s a good reminder that fighting the good fight in the places where it’s hardest to do so can be fantastic training for advocates. You can only actually figure out if you’re a hero if you strap your biggest sword to your back and set out for a land where you know there be dragons.