Coming Out Manly

Men coming out of the closet is business as usual. But pro athletes coming out of the locker room are another matter, one that’s making ripples and headlines everywhere.  As of this writing, at least one unnamed but presumably well-known professional player, from one of the four major sports, is about to drop the “I’m Gay” bomb. The National Hockey League, in anticipation of the big event, now officially offers its support to gay Americans in general and gay athletes in particular.

Not to be outdone, the National Football League has chimed in, with former Cornerback and current President of the AFL Player’s League Dominique Foxworth publicly committed to making the League a safe place for openly gay members.

It must be getting safer in other leagues as well. Within the past 12 months, boxer Orlando Cruz, former Redskins and Seahawks player Wade Davis, and Olympic Silver Medalist Ji Wallace joined other notable pros in declaring their homosexuality, and briefs supporting same sex marriage have been filed by Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, and Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo.

So the word is out: Gay ain’t sissy anymore.

Well, it never was, not really, and certainly not completely.  Homosexual men who are stereotypically effeminate have always stood out, but anyone familiar with the territory knows there’s no such thing as a typical gay man. A stereotypical one, yes, but typical? Hardly. And as for homosexual athletes, surprise over a masculine competitor’s attraction to other men is more of a modern than classical phenomenon, Ancient Greece being an easy and obvious case in point. Regardless, look for numerous and well publicized “coming out” confessions from pro-athletes over the next few months, and watch for lectures from all quarters admonishing us to drop our ancient prejudices against homosexuality because, after all, if the burly quarterback from the NFL is gay, then real men can be gay, so gay’s OK.

Let’s unpack this. Prejudice against homosexuals, based on false ideas about them, is falling away, and I’m glad. Because if you opposed homosexuality only because you thought all gay men were girlish, and if the exposure to more masculine homosexual men has challenged that myth, then you’ve had a necessary change of perspective. Likewise, if you considered homosexuality wrong because you assumed gays were child molesters, and you then discovered the vast majority of them would never harm a child, then your more balanced viewpoint is indeed a good thing. And from where I’m sitting, a large part of the culture’s shift from anti to pro-gay sentiment reflects a shedding of false stereotypes, and a more accurate picture of the people in question. I applaud the shedding; it’s the shift I oppose.

Because legitimate objections to homosexuality were never based on stereotypes, but rather on a Biblically based view of our Creator’s design for sexual union. Believing that sexual relations outside heterosexual marriage are wrong, be they adulterous, incestuous, pre-marital or homosexual, doesn’t require us to paint all the people involved in these behaviors with the same brush. I can recognize that couples living together apart from marriage, for example, may be responsible, likeable citizens. And I can still recognize the wrongness of their relationship, a wrongness not cancelled out by their virtues, just as their virtues aren’t cancelled by their wrong.

A person can likewise drop unwarranted ideas about homosexuals – assuming that they’re all promiscuous, for example, or presuming they’re all effeminate – while retaining the conviction that the thing itself is wrong no matter what sort of person engages in it. Because a Biblically based conviction looks not at the nature of the sinner, but the sin itself, a sin no less sinful just because its practitioner is masculine, friendly, accomplished, likeable. When an athlete announces he’s gay, as many surely will, that only tells us what we already know: that sin is an equal opportunity experience, affecting great and small, mousey and manly. I see nothing in scripture or common sense telling me that homosexuality is any more offensive to God than adultery, incest or fornication,  but neither do I see anything in either Testament telling me that a person’s good qualities make his sin any more legitimate.

So when the next closeted athlete comes out in a manly way, nothing new, or even very relevant, will have been proven. It will only be a reminder that wonderful people can feel and behave in less than wonderful ways; that the difference between sinful and legitimate impulses is determined by the Creator and not the creation; and that we can shed our misconceptions about people while retaining His conceptions about the human experience.

On that note, I sure hope you have an enjoyable, blessed weekend. Thanks for being here.

Love,

Joe