Basketball star comes out with little fanfare
A prominent athlete came out of the closet last week, but chances are, you haven鈥檛 heard about it.
When Brittney Griner, a three-time All-America Baylor University basketball player, publicly announced her sexuality in a news conference last week, most sports fans and media outlets didn鈥檛 seem to care.
While at first glance this may seem like an accomplishment worth celebrating, our collective shrug at the revelation speaks volumes about how far we鈥檝e come in accepting others as a country, it also shows how we far we need to go.
In the past few weeks, we鈥檝e spent immeasurable time speculating whether a major sports league like football or men鈥檚 basketball could handle a gay player, and the overreaching implications that such an announcement were to occur.
So when a professional athlete 鈥� who was the No. 1 draft pick and has been hailed as one of the most 鈥渄ominant basketball players in recent memory鈥� by The New York Times 鈥� comes out as gay during her first press conference, you would expect a little more commotion. Why do we go into a national frenzy over speculation about whether a male athlete comes out as gay, but shrug when a female athlete does so?
Unfortunately, it seems America has a double standard when it comes to homosexuality. As we anticipate the next gay athlete, we should make sure that we don鈥檛 do so at the expense of others like Griner.