Thanks to Golden Age of Gaia.

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay,” says Jason Collins. Kwaku Alston/For Sports Illustrated.

Stephen Cook: It’s ridiculous that this has taken so long and that it’s such a ‘novelty’ story. For me, this isn’t so much a ‘major sportsman in a major league comes out’ story as it is another moment of disclosure entering the wider public domain; for truth and equality.

In this case, a man named Jason Collins simply wanting his own truth to be known while, at the same time, exposing the hypocrisy of a system in professional basketball, football and baseball in not only the US but around the world that has kept this athlete’s (and other sports stars’) sexuality a taboo subject.

It’ll be interesting to see how this ‘revelation’ flows into the other hallowed halls of sport, especially as this story has been ‘broken’ in Sports Illustrated. Coincidentally (or not), it follows another story written just prior to this about an aspiring NFL player, Alan Gendreau, who is openly gay (see second story below). Meanwhile, another ‘disclosure’ has been made.

NBA Star Announces He’s Gay

Jason Collins, a veteran centre in the National Basketball Association (NBA), announced on Monday that he was gay, breaking one of the final frontiers in US sports and society.

Collins became the first active player from any of the four major US men’s professional sports leagues to publicly reveal his homosexuality.

If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

He did so in a first-person account published in Sports Illustrated, saying he had gradually become frustrated with having to keep silent on gay issues. The Boston Marathon bombings this month had convinced him not to wait any more for a perfect moment to come out, he wrote.

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA centre. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation,” Collins said.

“I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ said Collins, who played last season with the Boston Celtics and then the Washington Wizards and is currently a free agent.

“If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”

Reaction to his announcement flooded in swiftly.

Players, administrators and some politicians applauded him for taking a stance. Some hailed it as a landmark day in American civil rights, as important as when Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in baseball.

Collins’ move came at a time of heated debate over gay rights in the United States, where polls show public opinion is fast moving toward greater acceptance, although a core of social conservatives oppose such change.

In the coming months, the Supreme Court will rule on whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In 2011, the military repealed a ban on openly gay soldiers.

“Jason’s announcement today is an important moment for professional sports and in the history of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community,” former US president Bill Clinton said in a statement.

NBA commissioner David Stern said he was proud of Collins.

“Jason has been a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career and we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue,” Stern said.

In a country where it is no longer news for politicians and entertainers to be openly gay, the absence of an openly gay male player in any of the major professional sports had become a hot topic.

Sports, which helped play a key role in changing public opinion on racial discrimination, had come to seem out of step with much of the rest of American society.

Collins, who is 34, and who has played with six different teams during his 12 years in the NBA, said he never had any grand plans of being the first openly gay player, but events off the basketball court persuaded him to come out.

He was inspired by last year’s gay pride parade in Boston, he said, but delayed making an announcement due to a desire to protect his team, waiting until the end of the regular 2012-2013 season ended. Collins was also prompted by the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings which killed three people and wounded more than 200, he said.

“The recent Boston Marathon bombing reinforced the notion that I shouldn’t wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect,” he wrote in Sports Illustrated. “Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully?

Praise Floods In

Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA’s greatest players, was among dozens of active players who took to social media to applaud Collins.

“Proud of @jasoncollins34. Don’t suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others,” Bryant tweeted.

Two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash tweeted: “The time has come. Maximum respect.”

A-list celebrities also were quick to back Collins — from movie director Spike Lee, a front-row spectator at New York Knicks games, to US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who herself made headlines when she came out.

“Jason Collins just did Beautiful Thing. Be Yourself,” Lee tweeted. “Thank You For Your Courage,A Slam Dunk Against HOMOPHOBIA.And Dat’s Da ‘FREEDOM’Truth,Ruth.”

DeGeneres said on Twitter: “I’m overwhelmed by your bravery, Jason, and sending so much love.”

Here’s the original Sports Illustrated Jason Collins story: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/news/20130429/jason-collins-gay-nba-player/

Alan Gendreau

Alan Gendreau hopes to kick up interest in NFL

By Kevin Paul Dupont, Globe Staff – April 28, 2013

Alan Gendreau was all over the news last week, not so much because of his football skills, but mostly because he’s gay, and that he’s holding on to a dream. It’s only that latter point that should really matter, but all the hullabaloo around Gendreau’s story and his sexual orientation the last few days is a reminder that many of us are just not quite there yet.

Raised in Florida, the 23-year-old Gendreau had his shot at the NFL draft a year ago, and for a variety of reasons he didn’t get selected. He’s a kicker, a pretty good one, but kickers generally aren’t a hot commodity in the draft. For example, the annual NFL jamboree conducted this weekend counted only two kickers among its 254 picks. As essential as they may be to a team’s fortunes (see: Adam Vinatieri, Snow Bowl), kickers remain somewhat of an afterthought, a curiosity if not an oddity, when the NFL’s 32 teams fill their cart with the annual college crop of groceries.

Gendreau is different, in part because he’s an openly gay athlete who wants to be in the NFL, but also because he didn’t do his kicking at a huge college football factory. A football and soccer standout at Orangewood Christian High School, just north of Orlando, he attended Middle Tennessee State on a scholarship and went on to set the Sun Belt Conference record for points (295) over four seasons with the Blue Raiders before graduating last spring.

For all that success, however, Gendreau didn’t find a taker in the 2012 NFL draft. There was that mediocre senior season (8 for 14 on field goal attempts) he posted in 2011. There was the fact that he didn’t have an agent. And then, of course, he didn’t have USC or Georgia Tech or Alabama or some other Big Time Football U proof of pedigree on his résumé. He only had that boatload of points and an equal amount of faith that his record would speak for itself, get his kicking foot in the door.

In retrospect, as he said in a story published last week by Outsports, that approach was “half-assed.’’

So now Gendreau, out and proud about his sexual orientation since age 15, is all in on the football thing. The Outsports story, written by Cyd Zeigler, drew massive attention from the national mainstream media last week. The New York Times and ABC News were quick to chronicle it. Interest grew so rapidly, so abundantly, that his Los Angeles-based publicist, Howard Bragman, by Thursday was dismissing out of hand further media requests to interview Gendreau.

“I could have him out there 40 hours a day right now, doing TV, radio, and print,’’ Bragman said by telephone on Thursday. “But the object for this kid is not to be an activist. Yeah, he’s gay, and that’s all good. But the story, what he wants to do, is for him to make it to the NFL.’’

For the moment, there is no making Gendreau’s sexual orientation beside the point. It’s the core of his story, which of course is why it’s here on Page 2 of your Sunday Globe sports section. If he were just a heterosexual kid with a lingering, unfulfilled dream, a year out of college and working a residential real estate job in D.C., a Bible on his bedstand, he wouldn’t be even an agate line next to the Middlesex League baseball results on the Scoreboard page.

Even then, the story isn’t so much what Gendreau is, but rather what North America’s pro sports industry is not.

At this hour, not a single gay athlete in the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NHL, or the NBA has come out while under contract with a team in any of those leagues. Ex-players have come out, as long ago as former NFL running back Dave Kopay in 1975. But the professional sports workplace, in some cases, is still batting 0-for-over-a-century when it comes to creating a culture, an environment, a workplace that would offer a gay athlete the freedom to let his teammates, coaches, and employer know he is homosexual.

Gendreau’s attempt to win a job, or at least be offered a tryout, comes at a time when great strides on the subject are being made by the You Can Play Project. Founded in the memory of Brendan Burke, the Xaverian Brothers (Westwood) High School grad who was killed in a car accident on the eve of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, YCPP in recent months has done a magnificent job of shaping the discussion and promoting the cause of LGBT athletes. Only this month, the NHL and its players’ union forged a formal partnership with YCPP. Other leagues could do the same very soon.

You Can Play’s overarching message: Everyone, no matter what their sexual orientation, deserves a fair shot. Not very confusing, is it? Frankly, it’s astounding that it’s 2013 and something so obvious still has to be stated, protected, championed.

Meanwhile, Gendreau is busy in D.C., balancing his real estate job, searching for an agent, figuring out how to stretch his paycheck to cover costs of a kicking coach, nutritionist, and trainer. NFL training camps open in July, and all he’s looking for is a shot, someone to hold the ball while he fixes foot and eye on a target that he hopes has not faded from view.