OT: UMass Basketball Player becomes first openly Gay D1 player
Massachusetts starting sophomore Derrick Gordon just came out publicly, he becomes the first openly gay athlete in D1 Mens Basketball:
"I just didn't want to hide anymore, in any way," Gordon told ESPN. "I didn't want to have to lie or sneak. I've been waiting and watching for the last few months, wondering when a Division I player would come out, and finally I just said, 'Why not me?'"
[Ed-S: I'm going to try allowing discussion, though this has a lot of potential for politics. Remain civil and respectful of others' and their opinions.]
He came out this morning. The Michael Sam thing was big for a few days, but it's largely died down. People barely note Jason Collins anymore.
Compare that with OH MY GOD DID THEY FIND THE PLANE YET, and I think the coverage of this issue has (for the most part) been pretty proportional to the level of newsworthyness.
I was definitely moreso referencing the Michael Sam story, it had taken over. In their defense, though, they did the same thing with Tebow & Jeremy Lin. It just gets overwhelming how they'll find a jewel of a story and then obsess over it.
Hi thumper. How are things today?
...aaaaaaand SCENE.
Well done, everyone. Really well done.
/curtain drops on the conversation.
this is hysterical. This is worse than that fund manager who compared negative news stories about the uber wealthy to the treatment of Jews before the holocaust.
Bolivia until November for both of you.
For such an extended trip, good to know what it is you're getting into.
Tip of the cap to that young man. Be who you are!!
This news is board-worthy and discussion-worthy and not politics.
Please keep the conversation OFF of politics and religion and religion-politics and so forth.
Oops man sorry didn't see this. Delete my stuff if you wish.
Chances of that happening are <0.000001% :)
There's already been a heavy (and necessary) purge of comments.
Without Section 1, it seems like it. I upvoted almost everybody.
what really need to happen is a top player, one that is projected to be a draft pick in the top 2 rounds in football or a first round grade in basketball, needs to come out, that way pro teams can't say they the player wasnt graded as highly by them as an excuse when they decide to pass them up in the draft.
I have deleted several comments about how gay is bad, and about how Christianity is bad because it thinks gay is bad, and about how the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the only TRUE path to heaven.
I have done this in the name of restoring order. I don't know if this makes me Pilate or Torquemada or what. But we're staying away from such things.
As a participant in that war, I support your decision.
You shouldn't delete comments about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's not a religion--it's a relationship.
RAmen.
I second andrewg's sentiment. Sometimes I get diarrhea of the brain and forget that nobody ever changes their mind from something like that. My apologies.
and although it takes someone to change their own mind, encouraging people to be open-minded about such things is part of interacting on a publically accessed forum such as this.
Even though I'm also a regularly attending church goer and Christian, I try not to pass judgement on others and encourage folks to live their lives as they want without hatred. Don't kill anyone and don't keep me from living my life the way I want either, and we'll get along just fine.
In the near future, those opposed to this will soon look as dumb as these people do now:
Question for thought: What do we as a society deplore now that will be looked on two generations from now as bigoted and wrong?
A group of people being persecuted and having laws that forbid them from taking part in things the general population can do freely, all for something they were born with and have no control over? Seem like a lot of similarities to me.
Unless of course you, Gucci Mane, think it's a choice.
To me it looks like this: My grandmother was reasonably racist. She was okay with African Americans as long as they stayed in their place, i.e., where they were in about 1940.
To be 100% clear: I'm not defending my grandmother's views. I am saying that your opinion looks like hers to me.
April 10th, 2014 at 12:02 AM ^
I keep hearing this "you are born that way" argument. I've never been able to find a good study that proves homosexuality is genetic. I really would appreciate if someone has that info. Also, I would bet a very large sum of money that some people that live a homosexual lifestyle are doing it for attention or some other psychological reason. You can't choose or live your life as if you are another race, so to me there is a huge difference.
This article does a decent job of discussing the two sides of the arguement.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/homosexuality--choice-born-science_n_2003361.html
And I would disagree with you about the race thing as well. If someone is born with mixed race parents they can "choose" to identify with one or the other.
You are entitled to your opinion and I respect that. Some people will use anything to get attention, but I would argue that they are in the minority. All I am asking for is for the world we live in to be built around acceptance and appreciation for our differences. You are Polish? I am Irish. I can appreciate you all the same despite our differences.
April 10th, 2014 at 11:29 AM ^
Thanks, I'll read the article. I understand what you are saying about people of mixed heritage, but that still doesn't mean sexuality is equal to race to me. That would be like someone being bisexual and chosing to live as either hetero or homo. I'm talking about people that don't have homosexual attraction chosing to live that way, which I will agree is probably a very small minority but still possible. In my example, as a caucasian I cannot chose to live as an African American. As far as accepting differences, I can accept and appreciate someone as a person and still disagree with their behavior for moral reasons. If my best friend was cheating on his wife, I wouldn't stop being friends with him becuase he did something I thought was wrong. I'd try to encourage him to make it right and love him as a friend through the situation. I would try to do the same if I had a any gay friends (I don't chose not to, there just aren't a bunch of openly gay people where I live). How I would do this gets into a lot of religion which I won't discuss here, but I think the process is possible.
Edit: Most of the info in the article wasn't new to me. There was one interesting study mentioned that I hadn't heard before. The possibility that exposure to certain hormones during fetal development can affect sexual orientation is interesting. If that is true, it would answer a question I've heard often which is "why would God make people gay?". If your orientation can change between conception and birth, that could make both sides of the argument correct. Thanks for sharing the article.
April 10th, 2014 at 11:19 AM ^
A very interesting article. I don't usually buy what HuffPo is selling, but the argument basically boils down to "nature vs. nurture" which is an age-old question and as yet unresolved. To be quite honest, anyone who takes purely one side or the other in the debate as it relates to homosexuality is opening themselves up to very fatal flaws in their argument.
"Sexual attraction is purely a choice, and we need to get gay people to change it" - well, no, no more so than the infinite variances in heterosexual attraction which any idiot can tell based on, you know, what he or she knows about their own attractions. Some people think Sarah Jessica Parker is very attractive - I can't choose to not think she looks like a horse. I didn't ask for a particular thing for redheads, I'm just glad society thinks that's OK.
"Sexual attraction is purely biological and uncontrollable, and we can't discriminate nor ask people not to act on their desires" - except that's exactly what we ask pedophiles to do, and changing that is not up for debate.
How about we actually be honest with ourselves? This means accepting that we have drawn lines regarding acceptable sexual behavior, sometimes for very good reason, and a sufficiently large group of people is asking that we redraw those lines. This also means thinking through the full ramifications of arguments made one way or the other.
Did you honestly just compare homosexuality to murder? Are you really that thick?
So you want all the gays to stay in the closet then, hm? Just go ahead and practice being straight?
Do me a favor and go out there and practice being openly gay for a few years or so and then tell me if you, as a presumably straight male, enjoyed that experience of hiding who you really are.
Has Derrick Gordon ever been photographed wearing a Michigan hat while shopping with a model? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Has he ever been a robot from the future photographed with Michigan gear?
I think at this point the big problem is only the media cares about this anymore. The public does not care. The man on the street does not care. The average fan does not care. No one actually cares whether or not someone is gay*.
The only way something like this would even remotely be eyebrow-raising to me would be a high-profile athlete getting caught cheating on his wife with a man or something along those lines.
So let's hurry up, have someone like Richard Sherman declare he's gay, because from there the "OMG THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!~!~!~" Value of the story can only go downward.
*I know that some people actually do and I'm generalizing. However, the amount of people who would actually cause some sort of trouble due to someone being gay is miniscule.
Being openly anything can get you beaten up or killed in the United States. A quick google search will verify this.