Are they still athletes?
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by user Jamel
"You take showers together, you're on the bus, you talk about things. With teammates, you have to be trustworthy. If you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, you're not trustworthy. It's the locker room code." LeBron James.
When you think of an athlete you think of a man with a capital "M". Strong, powerful, muscular...womanizer. When I think of a star athlete I think of a person like Kobe Bryant, A-Rod, Michael Jordan, perhaps even Brian Urlacher. But do you think of people like Derrick Paterson, Justin Fashanu, Magic Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds?
Chicago Bulls player Dennis Rodman acknowledged "many homosexual aspects of sports" in his 1996 memoir, Bad As I Wanna Be. "Watch any football game. What's the first thing guys do when they win a big game? They hug each other. What does a baseball manager do when he takes his pitcher out? He takes the ball and pats him on the ass…Man hugs man. Man pats man on ass. Man whispers in man's ear and kisses him on the cheek. This is classic homosexual or bisexual behavior," Rodman says.
Rodman became the first active black professional athlete to acknowledge a same-sex attraction in a 1995 Sports Illustrated article, where he said he "fantasized" about being with another man. Although he parties at gay clubs, paints his fingernails, colors his hair, and sometimes wears women's clothes, Rodman says he is not homosexual. "I'm not gay," he said in his book. "I would tell you if I was. If I go to a gay bar, that doesn't mean that I want another man to put his tongue down my throat -- no. It means I want to be a whole individual." Rodman added, "mentally, I probably am bisexual."
Rodman is easily dismissed. "Dennis Rodman was a clown," said Cyd Zeigler, president of Outsports.com. "He was a caricature. . . . He became so much more than his race or his sexuality or his sex." According to Zeigler, the public would react to Rodman's words and antics as publicity stunts. "That's just Dennis Rodman," they would say. "Him being gay or bisexual is completely safe for people," Zeigler added.
Even when athletes do engage in homosexual behavior, it doesn't mean they're homosexual. Homosexuality and homoeroticism have played a role in sports for decades, but seldom is it labeled gay. Phil Petrie, a college athlete at Tennessee State in the 1950's, recalls that "it was common for athletes to, in effect, sell themselves... to have sex for men." Petrie, now married with children, remembers football players who talked about "packing shit" or receiving oral sex, but the athletes did not consider their actions to be homosexual. Instead, it was a business transaction between cash-strapped athletes and men who wanted to have them. "If you have a group of people who are considered desirable, and you live in a capitalistic society, can you get them with money?" Petrie asked. "And the answer is you can get some." Still, "many of the athletes do not see someone paying them to have oral sex with them . . .as a homosexual act," Petrie said.
So what's going on in sports today? Men giving men oral sex, men doing steroids, penis' shrinking, Nazi's ruining baseball, Canadians.
So what do you think? What makes an athlete an athlete?
Jamel Bryant
