The New York Daily News has announced that locker rooms in professional sports appear to be ready for the coming out of gay professional athletes in male team sports.
But Kopay, a running back who played for five teams during his nine-year career, learned the hard way that the wide world of sports didn't want to make room for gays. He had been considered an excellent coaching prospect, but by the time his autobiography, "The David Kopay Story," was published in 1977, college athletic directors and NFL general managers wanted nothing to do with him. He still sounds shocked, more than 30 years later, by the hostility he encountered when he was interviewed by reporters and talk-show hosts about the book, and by the ugly phone calls and letters he received from anti-gay bigots.We've written about the subject of homophobia in sports and urging gay athletes to come out for years. Is this the year a gay professional athlete will kick that closet door open and be known as the first out and proud gay male team sport athlete?
"I am very pleased to have been part of the change that has occurred in sports," Kopay says, "but I didn't think it would take 35 years."
The moment Kopay and other gay athletes had fought for has finally arrived. Sports may not have been ready to embrace gay players, coaches and team executives back in the 1970s, but there is a "Brokeback Mountain" of evidence that suggests it is ready today.
