Gay professional athletes

Thomas stands as "an example of someone who came out, has been accepted by his teammates and moved on just fine", says Brian Kitts, co-founder of the You Can Play project, a support system for gay athletes and their straight allies in team sports. Whether these famous Olympians, tennis greats, and basketball players came out after they retired, or revealed their sexuality during their sports careers, they’ve paved the.

In , the English footballer Justin Fashanu came out as gay, and was the subject of criticism, scorn and lurid speculation. He later killed himself after being accused of sexual assault. In the West, rapid cultural change has created a more welcoming environment for gay players, though there are still very few making public declarations about their sexuality.

But even in less accepting countries, gay athletes have found a way to make their voices heard. Team sports are viewed as the final frontier, the last blow against a macho culture that insinuates gay men cannot compare in terms of strength and grit with straight men, and would be a disruptive presence on a tight-knit team.

Men in individual sports, such as Olympic diver Greg Louganis or professional bowler Scott Norton, are also part of a growing group of gay male athletes. Nineteen years later, the Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas came out to little fanfare, followed in by Swedish footballer Anton Hysen.

Jason Collins is far from the first pro athlete to come out: indeed, women's sports have had lesbian competitors for decades. It wouldn't be that same reaction where the crowd feeds off it. In other parts of the world, the question of when a pro athlete on a team sport will come out is less pressing than other basic human rights issues.

Still, despite the gains made in gay rights in the past years, Collins stands alone as an out, active professional athlete on a major team sport. The groundwork has been laid. And he joins a very small fraternity of men across the world who can make the same claim. But for years, pundits have wondered when the US would see an openly gay team player from one of the big four professional sports: baseball, football, basketball or hockey.

English soccer player Justin Fashanu's family says his career suffered after he came out. Here's a list of players in college and pro football who have proved you can be gay or bi and still run the gauntlet. This is a list of notable, openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, and transgender sportspeople as well as those who identify as belonging to the broader queer community.

Jason Collins left said he had suffered "years of misery" because of his sexuality. Which professional athletes have ‘come out’ as gay? But the shift in culture will take a long time to complete. The athlete quickly made a name for herself in a series of TV interviews, where she voiced her support of women's rights and LGBTQ rights as an openly gay woman.

To be a gay athlete would be impossible," says Stevens. Billie Jean King - Tennis Easily one of the most recognizable names in professional tennis, Billie Jean King is a living legend. He says straight allies like Ben Cohen, the former England rugby player, have done well to make sports seem more inclusive.

Collins' announcement, says Jim Buzinski, co-founder of OutSports, a website devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender LGBT athletics, is the culmination of a slow, steady march towards acceptance. Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas came out as gay in That groundwork was put in place due to several factors: the existence of gay and lesbian athletes in individual sports, the presence of straight allies within pro teams, and a cultural change in the US that finds fewer and fewer Americans opposed to homosexuality, and an increase in visible LGBT members throughout US society.

But while Western culture as a whole has become more accepting of gay men and women, those who follow the progress of gay athletes say the football culture in Europe and the UK has a long way to go to make the sport more welcoming. In his suicide note, he claimed the sex was consensual.

Will other athletes across the globe follow suit? Here are 25 LGBTQ+ athletes who have received accolades and made significant strides for their respective communities. Players like baseball's Billy Bean or basketball's John Amaechi have come out after retirement. Thanks to these prominent athletes who are gay, the sports world is becoming more and more accepting of homosexual players.

NBA player Jason Collins made headlines this week as the first active competitor in a major American professional sport to announce he is gay.