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➤ OUT ATHLETES, from p.20
“One thing I saw was that when I came back
into the NBA, my jersey was the number one
jersey, not LeBron, not Steph Curry,” Collins
said. “That shows the power of the LGBTQ
community and also our allies.”
An important theme of the discussion was
the role queer women have played in leading
the way for men. Collins emphasized the critical
role of Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova
as true trailblazers who helped make it
easier for men to come out later on. Navratilova,
who in recent years has become embroiled
in controversy over her apparent uneasiness
about trans athletes, came out in the 1981.
Billie Jean King, who also came out in 1981,
is best known for beating Bobby Riggs in the
1973 “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match.
Collins and Kenworthy will both enjoy their
respective places in history. Kenworthy is in
the midst of a career during which he has already
nabbed a Silver Medal at the 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sochi and competed again in
the Winter Olympics in 2018 in China, while
Collins, a well-respected team player throughout
his career in the NBA, will be remembered
as the fi rst out gay male professional athlete
from one of the four major US sports — MLB,
the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL — to come out
while still playing.
Also in attendance in the crowd for the
discussion was Billy Bean, the former MLB
player who played for the Tigers, Dodgers, and
Padres and came out in 1999 following his
retirement. He went on to pen a book detailing
his career and the hardships he endured
as a closeted athlete in the big leagues. In recent
years, Bean had served as Major League
Baseball’s fi rst ambassador of inclusion, but
he has since been promoted to vice president
and special assistant to the commissioner.
Bean was the second former MLB player to
come out, after Glenn Burke, who played for
the Dodgers and Athletics in the 1970s and
was a trailblazer in more ways than one because
he is widely believed to have invented
the “high-fi ve.” He made that phenomenon
popular in the sports world and then he carried
it with him to the gay world when, after
retiring, he would give others the high-fi ve
outside of gay bars in the Castro in San Francisco
during the ‘80s.
But Burke’s story took a tragic turn. Following
his retirement, his life was derailed
by health woes such as substance abuse and
he became homeless on the streets of San
Francisco. He died of AIDS complications
in 1994, but not before he wrote a fascinating
book about his experience navigating the
hyper-masculine sports world as a gay man.
He acknowledged in his book that his teammates
eventually realized he was gay and
most of them did not care, though he faced
homophobia from his manager, Billy Martin,
who hurled homophobic slurs at him.
GayCityNews.com | July 4 - July 17, 2019 21
/NECB.COM
/necb.com
/GayCityNews.com
