Michael Sam hasn’t changed any minds. He hasn’t single-handedly brought on any revolutions in sports
or relationships or the way we think and talk about sexuality. He just took a leap of faith and spoke honestly about himself. He was fortunate to have done so at a time when enough minds have changed on their own already, so that his very public coming out was met with more support and understanding than he might have been expecting.
It surely hasn’t been universal, that support and understanding, and those changed minds. We’ve talked before about how some minds can’t or won’t change, and more’s the pity. But even the most jaded observer has to see that the small minds are in the minority—maybe even a drastic minority. A much larger minority are thoroughly, vocally supportive of Michael Sam, and of anyone willing to risk their careers and reputations in furtherance of equality. Good for that larger minority, I say, but I’m even more interested in an even larger group, the one I think is the hands-down majority.
Most people, I think, will if they’re interested in football judge Sam based only on his gridiron performance. If they’re not sports fans, then they’ll probably not judge him at all. Because I think most people—and these are the people who’ve most benefited from the inexorable changing of minds—really don’t care about other people’s sex lives.
It sounds so basic, so simple. In time, it will be; invisibly so. For now it’s still a sea-change, and it should be celebrated as such. We’re still tainted by puritanism, in the U.S. at least, and it’s taken a lot of society-wide growing up to get to the point where we can almost let that go. We’re far from done with the process, as it happens, and there’s nothing to guarantee we won’t backslide into the days when we felt right minding each other’s business and when it was okay to persecute people for being themselves. But for now it feels as though we’re leaving that behind, heading in a much better direction.
Change like this is a journey. We’ve been on it a long time. Maybe it started at Stonewall. More likely it started everywhere at once, in a very small, almost unnoticeable way. Maybe it starts for everyone, if they let it, when they look around with open eyes and notice for the first time that there are gay people everywhere, and some of them are quite close to us.
Having that realization means a decision is necessary. We have to decide how we’ll react to it. The choice is pretty stark: either reject that certain undeniable percentage of friends, family, coworkers and peers. Or accept them for who they are.
Again, I’m not saying acceptance is across the board. Far from it. But there’s more acceptance now than ever before, and that’s heartening. It was heartening to see students and alum of the University of Missouri forming a human chain a half-mile long, to keep haters and protesters away from Michael Sam and his teammates accepting their Cotton Bowl trophy on Saturday.
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And it was heartening to see one Dallas sportscaster, Dale Hansen, defy expectation and Texas stereotype with an on-air commentary that was nothing less than breathtaking. Chances are you’ve seen the video—millions have the world over. But it’s worth watching again, so I’ve embedded it below.
I can’t predict what will happen with Michael Sam’s career. Maybe professional football, in character and content, just isn’t in step with larger society’s creep toward equality, so maybe Michael Sam won’t have a career at all. I hope that’s not the case, but the possibility certainly exists.
Or maybe it will be like the American military. We were warned in the scariest possible terms that the acceptance of gays in the military would destroy the institution. The people saying that probably believed it, too. But the people at the point of that spear greeted it with a yawn. They’re of that generation and of that
mindset that aren’t frightened or put off by differences. They seemed to adapt seamlessly to a new, inclusive military. Maybe the same will happen in the NFL.
If not, then it’ll be as clear as ever that this journey isn’t over, and we have a ways to go before we can use the word “equality” without at least a hint of irony. So be it.
I regret we haven’t reached the end of this road but I’m grateful we’ve moved so far down it. I’m grateful that people around me, people I care about, are much less likely to be persecuted for simply being who they are, than ever before in my country’s history.
And I’m grateful beyond words to live in an age where an aging white Southern gentleman is empowered to look into a camera and say of Michael Sam, “I think it’s time to celebrate him now.”
