I am so looking forward to the end of firsts.
We live in an era of firsts, which is a good thing. The first female Secret Service director. The first African-American president. Most recently, the first openly gay man in a major professional sport.
Sometimes, the first barrier is broken and the feeling is joy. No matter your political persuasion, it made you feel good about America and its capacity to transcend its stained history to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office, his hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. Sometimes, the barrier is broken and the feeling is joy leavened by puzzlement: “Really? What took so long?”
Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that Washington Wizards center Jason Collins felt free, finally, to come out of the closet. If you are gay, or know someone who is gay — which is to say, pretty much all of us — it has been quite the year. But when politicians who once squirmed at questions about same-sex marriage are now elbowing their way to microphones to pledge their support for it, how weird is it that the openly gay male athlete barrier took so long to fall?
After all, the notion of the lesbian athlete has long been a big yawn. But boys being boys, the idea that you couldn’t be a jock and be gay was harder to dislodge. As Collins wrote in Sports Illustrated, “I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”