Gay Athletes

Little wonder gay athletes keep their personal lives private when some of the world’s biggest sports stars have labeled them worse than animals or used gay slurs as insults. More so when those brave enough to go public receive death threats. A lack of tolerance, however, is becoming less tolerated in professional sports. And the slow drip of athletes coming out has turned into something of a trickle. Even so, there have yet to be openly gay players competing regularly in most of the world’s top leagues. Are professional sports ready to fully embrace the diversity of their athletes?

The Rio Olympics provided a more LGBT-friendly backdrop than the 2014 Sochi Games, which took place in the shadow of Russia introducing anti-gay legislation. By one estimate, Brazil hosted more than double the 23 openly gay athletes who had competed at the 2012 Olympics in London. And almost half of them secured medals. They included British hockey players Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh, the first same-sex married couple to win gold medals. In 2014, Russia's discriminatory laws prompted calls for a boycott and — not for the first time — turned the Olympics into a mirror of contemporary political tensions. The issue is likely to intensify when Russia hosts the 2018 World Cup and again in 2022 when the soccer event moves to Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal. In the U.S., the National Basketball Association relocated its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte after North Carolina approved a law weakening anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which oversees college sports, also pulled games from North Carolina, but the National Football League declined to move an owners' meeting. In September, professional skateboarder Brian Anderson became the latest high-profile sportsman to come out as gay.