Despite Pro Sports’ First Out Active Male Star, U.K. Teams Still Homophobic
Prominent U.K. rugby star Gareth Thomas may have come out as gay, but that doesn't mean the sporting culture in Britain is ready to embrace gay athletes.
That's the opinion of publicist Max Clifford, who says that U.K. sports has plenty of homosexuals on the pitch, but that fans are still not ready to accept that pro athletes can also be gay. Clifford says that he's told two gay athletes to stay in the closet because coming out would be harmful to their careers.
Soccer "remains in the dark ages, steeped in homophobia," Clifford told the athletes, he told U.K. publication The Daily Star, a Dec. 21 article in that paper said. "It's a very sad state of affairs," Clifford added. "But it's a fact that homophobia in football is as strong now as it was 10 years ago." Added the publicist, "If you'd asked me in 2000 whether I thought we'd have a famous, openly gay [soccer player] by 2010 I would have said yes."
Thomas is still active as a player for the Cardiff Blues, though he has retired from international rugby. He disclosed the truth about his sexuality to a British newspaper recently, causing a sensation in the sports world. American former NBA star John Amaechi, who came out as gay only after his retirement in 2007, spoke to the British press about Thomas, saying, "When people learn you are gay, often that can squash your definition so all the good stuff goes and you just become 'some gay rugby player,' which is quite difficult for many athletes to deal with," reported Canadian news service CanWest in a Dec. 21 news item.
"Sport still needs to grow up in certain areas," Amaechi added. "As much as society has moved on, sport is still dragging behind."
"It would take a very courageous Premier League [soccer player] to come out because fans are so vociferous," opined Homophobia in Football's Peter Clayton, the Daily Star article reported, even though, Clayton added, "Some are out to their clubs and team-mates and nobody gives a jot."
Indeed, it wasn't Thomas' teammates who were crying foul in the papers; if anything, the only angle involving sex or romance to feature in the headlines was the revelation by Thomas' ex-wife Jemma that--as the Dec. 21 Daily Mail headline had it--"When Gareth Thomas told me he was gay, it was as if the man I loved had died."
Thomas told the Daily Mail about how he had been aware of his sexuality since age 17, but had attempted to deny it. In her interview, Jemma described how close she and Thomas were, saying that their wedding was "the proudest day of my life. I'll never forget the way Gareth turned to look at me as I walked down the aisle and told me I was beautiful and that he loved me. He was my childhood sweetheart and best friend. We told each other everything. We had no secrets from each other." With the exception, the article noted, of Thomas' true sexuality.
Thomas told The Daily Mail that his true orientation "was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn't. It was who I was and I just couldn't ignore it any more." Tomas and Jemma divorced in 2006; Thomas told The Daily Mail, "I've been through all sorts of emotions, tears, anger and absolute despair. I used to hope that I would wake up one morning and all these feelings could be gone. I would pray to God: 'I have Jemma, I love her, please take away these feelings.'"
In her response to Thomas' revelation, Jemma said, "I still love Gareth and I will never stop loving him.
"I'm incredibly proud of him for coming out and if anyone thinks any less of him because of it, then they are stupid," Jemma added. "I know it was a massive relief when he told me, his family and close friends three years ago, and it will be even more of a relief now that everyone knows.
"He is now free to be who he is," Jemma went on, "and I, and everyone else who knows and loves him, am happy for him because he is a very special person. I don't feel angry, embarrassed or humiliated, nor do I regret marrying Gareth for a second. I know with all my heart that he adored me as much as I adored him on our wedding day, and I had the most fantastic years of my life with him."
Continued Thomas' ex-wife, "He released me and in doing so he released himself. Gareth could have waited for years to tell me, wasted my life, and where would that have left me? I was only 30 when he told me, still young enough to meet someone else and have children."
There are indications that sports--including fans and players--may slowly be opening up more to gay athletes. Australia's openly gay diving champ Matthew Mitcham took the gold medal last year in the Olympics, to global acclaim. In America, more players are coming out--though many still wait until after retirement. Pro football stars have recently dared to voice their support for marriage parity for gay and lesbian families, and when the son of a hockey star came out as gay, the media--and his jock father--were supportive.
The British press was similarly welcoming to Thomas, taking the opportunity of his coming out to celebrate his courage off the field of play as well as on it--and to press for greater social acceptance of gay athletes. The chief sports writer for The Times, Simon Barnes, wrote an op-ed in which he observed, "We live in a world in which endless conundrums and variations of sexual behavior are forever in front of us, in a thousand different areas of public life. It's only when it comes to sport that things get all difficult and old-fashioned.
"You can be a gay MP, or a gay vicar," Barnes continued. "You can be quietly or flamboyantly gay, according to choice, and still present television programs. You can be a living national treasure and your status is not even remotely compromised by your sexuality.
"We live in a time when civil partnerships between same-sex couples are not only sanctioned by law, they raise few eyebrows when they take place," Barnes went on. "Just the usual sort of rejoicing. What was illegal half a century ago is now not only legal: it is no big deal.
"Except in sport," Barnes wrote. "That is why it is both right and necessary to praise the courage of Gareth Thomas, the most capped player in the history of Welsh rugby, who has chosen to come out. It is not his courage that is troubling: it is the fact that courage was necessary."
Barnes went on to note that athletics helped break down barriers between races in decades past. "But in questions of sexuality, male team sports have always been in perpetual flight from the very notion of homosexuality," Barnes noted. "No doubt it comes down to the fact that a football team, a rugby team or a cricket team are by definition homocentric--that is to say, it is all about people of the same sex.
"Such male groupings tend also to be homophobic," Barnes observed. "A group of people, working together with extraordinary intensity for a common cause, creates a situation of startling intimacy. There is, then, a consequent need to stress that though intimacy is desired, given and accepted freely, it has nothing at all to do with sex.
"But outside, in the real world, homosexuality is now often encountered as an unremarkable fact of life. As such, it cannot help but be more easily understood. The idea that a homosexual, male or female, is radically different in every way from a heterosexual has long since vanished," Barnes added. "The rest of the world has changed: sport is, slowly, grudgingly, in its own time, catching up with the society it caters for. Let us salute Gareth Thomas and look forward to the day when the courage he showed is no longer necessary--or even comprehensible."