This week seems to be full of individuals coming out of the closet. Tony Perkins and his fellow Christofascists must indeed be convulsing and twitching. The latest to join the list is former Villanova basketball star Will Sheridan. To make matters worse in the eyes of the religious extremists, Sheridan was out to his team and accepted. He even dated men while playing for the university's team. In an interview, among other things, Sheridan stated "I'm proud of who I am." Kudos to Sheridan and those like him who continue to show the lie of the anti-gay stereotypes promoted by the enemies of the LGBT community. One can only hope that individuals like Sheridan and Don Lemon will open some hearts and minds in the black community. ESPN has an lengthy article on Sheridan and his decision to go public about who he really is. Here are highlights (read the whole piece):*
I just said, 'I need to tell you something … I'm gay,'" Sheridan said. "I'm gay." Those two words are the last hurdles to be cleared in sports, the five letters strung together that critics insist would destroy a locker room and more, destroy the athlete who utters them.
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Yes, there are plenty of gay athletes we know of, but few men and fewer still from the major team sports. On OutSports.com, a website that covers the gay and lesbian sports community, numerous stories can be found of gay team captains and star athletes -- and the teammates who accepted them -- but for the most part, these stories come from high schools and smaller colleges and now even the highest positions in professional sports.
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But in terms of American athletes being out publicly at the highest levels of competition (pro leagues and the revenue sports in Division I), former NBA journeyman John Amaechi; ex-NFLers Esera Tuaolo, David Kopay and Roy Simmons; Glenn Burke and Billy Bean from Major League Baseball; and former college football players Dwight Slater (Stanford) and Akil Patterson (Maryland) are essentially the beginning and end of the list. And, like Sheridan, all of those players came out only after their playing days were over.
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Which is why now, four years after his Villanova basketball career ended, Will Sheridan feels compelled to talk. Not because of Bryant or Avery. He decided to speak publicly months before either incident occurred. But because he just doesn't get it anymore. The big deal. The turmoil. The stigma. He's proud of who he is, confident, comfortable, borderline arrogant even. And although it wasn't easy, his wasn't the torturously impossible and lonely road so many presumed it would be.
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"I'm trying to have a voice, and I want that voice to reach as many people as it can," he said. "I mean, look at me. I'm black. I'm gay. I'm like a quadruple minority, and I feel like a little piece of me resides in everybody. Maybe there's a kid out there who doesn't think he's OK, and he can look at me and say, 'OK, he played college basketball. He went overseas. He has a music career and now he's living his life. Now he's who he wants to be and he's happy and confident and comfortable.' It's my responsibility to talk about that."
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[B]y the time Sheridan graduated from his Catholic university, most of his teammates knew he was gay, and they didn't care. Amaechi is on the record as saying the same thing happened when he was with the Utah Jazz. More and more, coming-out stories -- especially among the younger generation -- include teammate support or, at worst, indifference. Sheridan told Nardi first and over the years told other teammates as he grew comfortable and trusted them. There was never, Nardi joked, "a team meeting to discuss Will being gay." It was simple and private, friends and teammates sharing personal information about one another.
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The locker room dynamic, team chemistry, none of it changed. He and Nardi would room together for three of their four seasons, and Sheridan remained a popular teammate and vital part of the Wildcats' success.
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Evidence of the team's unity and comfort lies in one simple nugget: Jay Wright never knew his starting power forward was gay until after Sheridan graduated. No one ever went to him with a complaint or a worry. No one even bothered to tell him. "After I found out, I was like, 'Did you know?' And all the guys, they were like, 'Yeah, Coach, we knew,'" Wright said. "They just didn't care, and I guess I was just oblivious."
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Sheridan came out to his parents at the end of his freshman season. He describes the conversation as "epic," stretching out the word and his arms across the table at a New York City restaurant to emphasize just how epic it was. Perhaps naive then -- "I figured I was in college and my tuition was paid for by my sport, so you love me for me, right?" -- Sheridan now understands better his parents' struggle to accept his sexual orientation.
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"I don't care how open-minded you say you are, as a parent you project so much on your kids without even realizing it," Sheridan said. "You want them to be the best at everything, and you have dreams of what your life will be and their life will be. To them, this was just no way. Denial. It didn't fit with who I was, or who they thought I was. I was perfect. This didn't work."
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But after the initial shock wore away, Josie looked at her son and saw something that had been missing -- happiness. He was always a good child ("too good to be true," his high school coach once told her), but a tickle in the back of her mind, a mother's instinct, told her he should have been happier. And she could never figure out what was missing. Until she saw it.
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Josie Sheridan always preached unconditional love, and she meant it. And when the test came -- when her son, whom she calls her best friend, sat her down -- loving him wasn't hard. But accepting the news was. . . .Although his mother quickly came to grips with her son's news, Sheridan's dad took time. A long time.
*As the article continues, I'm glad to say that Sheridan's father has come around. Too often I suspect parents worry more about what others may think or their own dashed expectations than they do about their own child. As I have written before, I was lucky in that both my parents took my coming out in stride and accepted me.
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