Watching my favorite baseball team on TV Monday night with my wife, we were minding our own business when coverage of the game all but came to a stop. The field reporter – the low man on the broadcast totem pole, the guy hired to work the locker room – broke into a lengthy and breathless commentary/sermon on Jason Collins and how courageous he is to come out of the closet in the face of this intolerant society and the forces of ignorance.
Having been in the sports broadcasting business for many years, my first reaction was to say to myself, I would not only never interrupt a game to give my opinion on something that had nothing to do with the game I was covering, I would never weigh in with my own personal morality on political or social issues. That was not my job, and not what the audience was tuned in to hear.
But this is the type of oh-so-predictable screed dominating the airwaves from the self-proclaimed forces of tolerance in America, including instantly self-important sports journalists way out of their depth.
Needless to say, the forces of tolerance had closed up shop when Redskins legend-in-the-making RG3 on Tuesday tweeted, In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness. There was no talk of RG3’s courage in essentially coming out of the closet as a conservative in a nation enveloped by political correctness.
Indeed, this same bunch preaching tolerance is hardly tolerant of anyone who dares to even ask questions about the whole thing, not to mention hold dissenting opinions.
There are many questions about this that are simply impermissible in our politically correct culture. Here is a top ten list (some of them have more than one part):
1) If you have to place three adjectives (active, professional, major) in the description of what’s being hailed as a momentous event, how momentous is it, really? I mean, if you’re the first athlete to do something, or the first professional athlete, then that may be momentous. But who are Martina Navratilova and Greg Louganis, chopped liver? Tennis and swimming may not be the most popular sports, but they are hardly obscure, and both of these extraordinary athletes were among the very best their sports have ever produced.
But because they did not represent “major sports,” their admissions of same-sex preferences don’t mean as much as a journeyman NBA player who’s averaged six points a game, who at 34 is on the downside of his career and makes the admission when his team’s season is over, he is a free agent and may already be at the end of the line? Collins seems like a perfectly good guy, but remember that Navratilova and Louganis came out when it was not fashionable to be gay and the concept of gay marriage was just a twinkle in the eye of the gay rights movement. And Martina, for one, has demonstrated both grace and humor in referring to her sexual preference.
2) The headline in the Sports Illustrated article reads I’m Black. And I’m Gay. Maybe I’m missing something here, but what does being black have to do with this? Are there any of us who thought every gay person is white? Isn’t it a fairly safe assumption that the same percentage of gay people in the general population – likely between 3% and 5% – exists within the black community and among athletes? And what about this notion that, because Collins is seven feet tall and rugged, this “shatters the stereotype” of the gay person, as George Stephanoloulos reported in his fawning interview with Collins on ABC. Did not all the previous athletes who came out of the closet in retirement, not to mention our own life experience, shatter that stereotype long ago?
3) With the black-and-gay headline and lofty homilies comparing Jason Collins to Jackie Robinson from so many simple-minded sports commentators desperate to be taken seriously because they cover the playground of the world, is the black community down with the cause of being compared to gay people?
4) Would it be abnormal for other NBA players to feel uncomfortable sharing the locker room and showers with someone who professes a sexual attraction to men? Having been in professional locker rooms frequently as a sports journalist, I would not advise you to bet the farm on this being widely embraced by fellow players But of course they will say little or nothing publicly.
5) When it does come to pass and leak out that many or most NBA players feel uncomfortable or worse about this, how will the mainstream media choose between two groups they dare not criticize, African-Americans and gay people?
6) Won’t the sports media get another bite at the apple if no one signs Collins, at which time they can climb back on their soap boxes and once more decry the forces of intolerance?
7) Where were all these front-running, bandwagon-jumping journalists before Mr. Collins came out of the closet? Never heard a word from them. They hardly stuck a toe in the water, and now they have taken a collective dive into the deep end so that everyone knows for sure that they are more than just sports journalists, that they have so much more to offer, and are truly compassionate. Sometimes I think these people ask themselves only one question on any issue: what position will make me look really compassionate?
8) Are Bible-believing Christians supposed to suppress their own views, and say being gay is just fine if they do not believe it? After an ESPN commentator answered a question by daring to advance the entirely orthodox view that Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible, the sports network actually forced the guy to walk back his statement
9) Is it possible that anyone not comfortable with the notion of an openly gay athlete in the locker room is anything other than homophobic or bigoted?
10) The old stand-by: is being gay a choice or an immutable characteristic? In the end, your view revolves around this question, and the two sides will never agree on the answer any more than than they will on the question of whether abortion is murder or an exercise of womens’ rights.
But the point is that we are not even allowed to ask these questions openly anymore.
This is a mirror image of how the media handled the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, when it was essentially impermissible in mainstream circles to ask the most obvious of all questions: did these proven radical Islamists commit the crime because of their radical Islamist beliefs? The question did not fit into the media’s framework of political correctness, so they diverted attention with earnest talk of how the reasons for this act of terrorism are, uh, complex. Yeah, that’s it. Complex.
When did we stop being honest enough to permit legitimate public discourse on issues of interest and importance to American culture, and America itself? It now seems that the ones in the closet are the people who dare not even to dissent, but to simply ask the questions that beg answers.
