I sat down with The New Republic’s Marc Tracy to talk about his article arguing that blogging is dying, and my response that blogging actually won, and it’s now serving interests other than those of people who wanted an easy way to publish independently. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion for me was the idea that blogging is changing in part because, to make it emotionally and logistically sustainable long-term, people have to embed themselves in larger organizations and to franchise, making blogs mini-publications with a united vision rather than a singular voice:

We also talked about Jason Collins’ public coming out, and how sports, which were a leader in civil rights when it came to race, have fallen behind the rest of society when it comes to sexual orientation.

Jason Collins may be the first man to come out of the closet not just to people in his immediate circle, but to the country as a whole, while still actively pursuing a professional career in Major League Sports, but he wasn’t the first man out in baseball. That was Glenn Burke, who in the seventies was out to both Dodgers management and his teammates, and who came out nationally after his retirement. And apparently, Jamie Lee Curtis and her production company have been trying to get an adaptation of Burke’s autobiography into production, and are hoping the momentum of Collins’ announcement might help them make it happen. As Deadline summarizes the story:

Drafted by the Dodgers and touted as a potential star, Burke got off to a flying start when he became the only rookie to start in the 1977 World Series. Burke also took credit for inventing the high-five in 1977. Waiting on-deck at Dodger Stadium, he was first to congratulate teammate Dusty Baker with that up-high slap, after Baker hit his 30th home run in the last game of the season. While his adversity was nothing compared to what Dodger predecessor Jackie Robinson faced when he broke baseball’s color barrier, Burke’s decision to come out of the closet probably hastened his demise. In his autobiography, Burke wrote about how Dodgers GM Al Campanis offered to pay for a pricey honeymoon if Burke would get married in a Rock Hudson-like charade, but the ballplayer wasn’t going along with the sham. Campanis later was fired for appearing on Nightline and making outlandish racist remarks. Burke’s stats show he did not live up to the potential expected of him, but he seemed at peace with his decision to not hide his off the diamond life. “They can’t ever say now that a gay man can’t play in the majors, because I’m a gay man and I made it,” he said. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994 and died a year later at age 42.

One of the most important things movies can do is get under-acknowledged history to a mass audience. Milk, for example, mattered so much precisely because it introduced a mass audience to the idea that the gay rights movement was, in fact, a long-standing effort, and one that involved heroes and martyrs who fit into conventional narratives about sacrifices for social progress. A biopic of Burke could similarly help combat the idea that sports were a previously heterosexual zone that was somehow colonized by gay people, reminding mass audiences that there have always been gay athletes, even if they didn’t choose to share that fact with fans, or if fans weren’t astute enough to pick up on it.

And I’m also excited about the possibilities of a Burke biopic precisely because the audience would come to it with few assumptions and expectations. One of the things that I found deadening about 42, and what ultimately would have sucked the air out of any Jackie Robinson biopic was how familiar everyone was with the story. It’s mandatory to have set-pieces like Pee Wee Reese’s public embrace of Robinson or Leo Durocher’s dressing-down of the Dodgers who didn’t want to play with a black man, no matter how well or how human each of those moments has the potential to be. But with a story about Burke, nothing will be mandatory. Everything will be new. And as a result, the movie can be more human and relaxed, less stiffly conscious of history, something that serves good art, as well as humane arguments for equality.

Robbie Rogers

On February 15 of this year, Robbie Rogers, a former member of the U.S. Men’s National soccer team and a professional player in both Europe and the United States, posted on a personal blog that he was gay. Rogers would have been the first openly gay player in major American professional sports, but he announced his retirement in the same post. In a New York Times article today, Rogers didn’t rule out a return to the pitch but said he had no choice but to retire. “I need to be a little selfish about this,” Rogers told the New York Times.

This week, rumors swirled that a National Football League player was contemplating coming out as gay in the near future. That prompted Seattle Seahawks defensive end Chris Clemons to tweet that a player coming out would be a “selfish act” that would “immediately separate a lockerroom and divide a team.”

That makes for an odd juxtaposition, the now openly gay former athlete thinking he’s selfish for coming out in his own way and the straight athlete who thinks it would be selfish for a player to come out at all. Clemons, who later tweeted that he had no problem with gay athletes but thinks they should leave their love life at home, could learn from the story of Rogers, who lived as a gay man in secret for years. Until last year, Rogers hadn’t told his family, his friends, or his teammates. He didn’t go to gay bars or date other men. It was, he told the Times, a terribly unhealthy way to live, though coming out has enabled him to find peace:

“I’m a Catholic, I’m a conservative, I’m a footballer and I’m gay,” he said, trying to describe his fear. “Imagine living all that time with just a cramp in your stomach. I kept thinking, I hope I don’t do something that makes people wonder, is Robbie gay?”

He added: “I was never close to coming out before. Never. I never went to any gay bars, never hooked up with a guy. It was so unhealthy and so bad that I felt this way. Two years ago, I would have thought that I would never come out during my entire life.” [...]

About a year and a half ago, he said, his fear turned into frustration. He realized he had never been able to feel complete happiness or joy because he always felt that he was hypocritical; as an example, he recalled, he felt little desire to celebrate after winning the M.L.S. championship with Columbus in 2008.

By January of this year, Rogers began telling close friends. Sacha Kljestan, a midfielder on the United States team who plays professionally in Belgium, visited Rogers in London a few weeks ago — the pair went to a pub to watch the Tottenham-Arsenal match together — and Kljestan said he had never seen Rogers more at ease.

Seeking that happiness and comfort in your own life isn’t selfish. Nor is it selfish for Rogers to step away from the game to seek out that peace without the media spotlight that would come from being an openly gay athlete in major male professional sports at a time when there aren’t any others. What is selfish is that someone like Clemens would put his own personal discomfort and insecurity at being next to a gay man in the lockerroom ahead of that person’s health, well-being, and ability to live an open and happy life as the person they are. What is selfish is that Clemons doesn’t understand what people like Rogers go through on a daily basis, and worse, doesn’t seem to care about understanding their struggle.

Millions of LGBT people are struggling with the same decision Rogers made, and an untold number of them are athletes. There are gay men in the NFL, perhaps even in Clemons’ lockerroom, who are having that same struggle, who live in the same closet in which Rogers spent 25 years, living a lie and unable to both embrace themselves and be embraced for who they are. I would love to see Robbie Rogers continue his career by carrying the banner for LGBT rights in sports. But it isn’t selfish of him to choose not to. But one day, a gay athlete is going to pick that banner up and take on that fight. If that person separates a team and divides a lockerroom, it won’t be because he is the selfish one.

Though the world of sports has, for the most part, trailed the rest of American culture in the fight for LGBT equality, that fight has come front and center in recent weeks. NFL players Chris Kluwe and Brendan Ayanbadejo filed a brief in the Supreme Court fighting for marriage equality. Professional soccer player Robbie Rogers came out as gay in a blog post that also announced his retirement from the sport. And NFL teams have been embroiled in controversy over whether they asked future draft picks about their sexuality and if they “liked girls.”

There still isn’t an openly gay male athlete in American professional sports, but there is a growing sense that that could change soon. With that in mind, I talked to Travon Free, a former college basketball player at Cal State-Long Beach who came out as bisexual after his career ended, about what challenges face athletes who stay in the closet and about the challenges the first openly gay athlete will face. Here is a loosely edited transcript of our conversation:

You came out in a blog post on your website in 2011. What went into that decision, when you decided you were going to be public about it?

Around that time, summer of 2010, there were a lot of kids killing themselves, and it was really sad. Some friends and family knew, so I wasn’t going out of my way to hide it, and so after seeing that and just, like, being heartbroken by all those stories, I just felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt like I was doing a disservice to myself and all those people who might look toward me as a some type of silver lining or a role model; if it was just one person who saw there was one person like me in a space where that was typically frowned upon or accepted.

Did you ever think about coming out while you were still playing basketball?

Oh yeah, I did. I thought about it a couple times. It’s funny. You go through a couple moments where you gauge the temperature of your peers to see how they might handle it, and for the most part, I don’t think it would have been a problem. My team didn’t seem very homophobic. It was funny because I used to tell people, my teammates loved to do really gay things, just do really silly shit. I think it’s kind of like that on sports teams in general: guys love to play around by pretending or doing things that are typically deemed gay, because the joke is, ‘I’m not really gay, I’m just doing this because it’s funny.’ Just hearing the occasional serious conversation or pseudo-serious conversation where guys would say, ‘I don’t really care’ or ‘it’s not a big deal,’ or they’d say they didn’t have an opinion, and I think you know what that means. The closer I got to graduating, the more comfortable I became with it, to where I stopped going out of my way to hide it. It was like, if someone found out, I wouldn’t care.

I think my coach would have not tolerated any type of animosity toward me if I did it. I think [former Long Beach coach Larry Reynolds] was pretty good about stuff like that. He wouldn’t have allowed it to be an environment where there would have been any hostility toward me for doing it.

How did you gauge it with teammates?

The couple times I can remember it came up organically. There was one road trip I remember. We were somewhere and there was a billboard, I don’t remember if it was a pro-family billboard or an equality-type thing. I just remember we passed it and it started a conversation. I would always listen closely to those kinds of things. I didn’t hear a lot of negativity toward it at all, it was really just guys talking about it. I didn’t hear anyone say, ‘No way would I play with a gay teammate,’ or ‘I don’t like gay people.’ At the time I remember thinking, ‘Well that’s a little comforting.’ If I did decide to do it, I don’t think my teammates would turn against me.

Afterward I got a lot of support from them. Old teammates would contact me and say, ‘I heard about it and you’re still one of my best friends, it doesn’t change anything.’ There was only one teammate who I found out about in retrospect who tried to make it a thing that people should be concerned about. I don’t know what his intention was. I didn’t find out about that until after I graduated. I found that out from another teammate. And the thing is, he was telling people stuff that wasn’t true. So that was the only guy who I guess had a problem with it.
Read more