Black Man.  6’2″ 255lbs. Defensive Lineman. Homosexual.

Hello America, please take a look at the face of ‘the geigh’ soon to be on your  television on any given Sunday.

First I am going to clue you into one of the worst kept secrets on earth….there are gay men who play in the NFL.

These men are in the closet publicly but they exist.  They have always existed.  The ‘geigh’ is all around you America whether you know it or not, accept it or not, approve of it or not the ‘geigh’ is here to stay.

Men in the NFL since its creation have been engaging in homosexual sex acts.  Not all of them of course. Not all of the time of course.  Yet they have always been there.  It is just now in 2014 that one man has the courage to proclaim it publicly and deal with the backlash that comes with that declaration.

It is still a testament to our progress as a nation that anyone has to announce their sexuality. Straight men and women need not announce they are straight.  They do not announce it because they live in the majority, they live in acceptance.  They live in a world where your being straight comes with privilege and they both use and abuse that  privilege.  Anyone on the alternative sexuality spectrum does not get to move about life in the same fashion.

If the details of your sexuality happen to become common knowledge, and they are anything other than man/woman/married/heterosexual for procreation sex …. then you are presented with a dilemma.

All of a sudden you sex, your sex life, your sex preferences are the story instead of whatever else it is that you do.  You can cure cancer.  You can split the atom. You can invent a time machine, go back in time and prevent Hitler from being born and save the lives of 6 million + men, women and children in the Holocaust…. but you will be the gay person who does it.

In our current state of being here in the good ole USA, the ‘geigh’ outweighs everything else.

The problem is…. the ‘geigh’ has always been there.

As long as human beings have existed there has been homosexuality.  If you can think of something that a human being can or has done you need to also understand that someone who has homosexual sex has also done it.

At some point in our human development we need to get past defining a person by the sex that they have — or don’t have.  That includes an athlete or NFL prospect having to announce his sexuality.

While this young man’s courage should be applauded, it would be a better world if he simply did not have to make the announcement at all.  He should be able to live his life without observation like all those straight men (or men that you think are straight) who have done this before him.

When we can look at Michael Sam as S.A.M. [Single Adult Male] and not that gay guy who wants to play football.

What a wonderful world this would be…..

 

 

Aphrodite Brown