Jun 1st, 2001
Safe to be “out?” Professional Athletes in the Closet.
In the May issue of OUT Magazine, Editor Brendan Lemon wrote about his very secretive 18-month relationship with a professional baseball player who is not out. He wrote about how challenging it is to be an openly gay man (heading up a national gay magazine, no less) while hiding this relationship from even his close friends. Lemon didn’t name names and says he would never out his lover, but the hints he dropped stirred up a lot of curiosity.
The article, which Lemon initially wrote for the gay publication to weigh the risks and consequences of coming out, quickly created a buzz far beyond the readership of OUT Magazine. Lemon’s pseudo-outing of his boyfriend
caught the attention of many mainstream publications, including Newsday, New York Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and Seattle Times.
For this half-out/half-closeted power couple, maintaining their privacy will be increasingly challenging — if not impossible — as more eyes are on Lemon to see who he spends time with. The ballplayer might come out, or he might be “outed” by someone else, or he might feel pressure to go even deeper in the closet. In any event, Lemon could have a lot more to say about the risks and consequences of coming out in the near future.
On a more positive note, Lemon has sparked some interesting debates about professional sports and sexual orientation. Besides the juvenile who-is-it-who-is-it guessing game, journalists and commentators are contemplating bigger issues. Like, for example, if some gay actors have led the way for others to come out in show business, why has no ballplayer tried blazing a trail for gay people in professional sports? What would be the professional and personal costs for athletes to come out? How would the presence of openly gay ballplayers affect the attitudes of baseball fans who are homophobic? How would openly gay ballplayers influence the ways queer youth feel about themselves?
Bill Konigsberg, an assistant editor at ESPN.com, reflected on why this issue is such a big deal, and in the process, outed himself, saying that most people assume he is straight because he is “nonstereotypical.” In his commentary, he says:
Being gay in sports shouldn’t be a big deal, but until someone does it publicly and shows they can do their job, do it well, and be known as gay, it simply will be a big deal.