There’s two links I have with Brendan (purely through a hockey fan).

First, I’m a huge Detroit Red Wings fan, and when his dad was GM of the Anaheim Ducks, the teams are in the same conference as the Wings and took them out of the playoffs on their way to the Cup on ’07.

Branden’s college, Miami University, plays in the same league, the Central Collegiate Hockey Association as my local team, Bowling Green State University. If there was a way I could afford to attend the next BGSU/Miami game I would just to say hi to the young man.

I logged on the ESPN article, and there are surprisingly alot of supportive comments there, and the ones making negative comments are appropriately chastized.

It’s sad that in pro baseball, basketball and basketball a gay player can’t come out until he retires.

To bootstrap to what Burr commented on, it’s due to the all-American aspect of the game and the way religion is deeply infested in those three sports. Here’s hoping the more international baseball and basketball becomes, the less homophobia there is.

It also doesn’t help that the heads of all three leagues refuses to make a concerted effort to drive home the point that anti-gay slurs are just as immoral as racial slurs, and has yet to create a support group for gay players.

It also didn’t help that when the NBA’s Daniel Stern undermined a supportive rival womens’ pro basketball league to begin the WNBA, they forced the players to attend *charm school* and femmed them up (ala A League of Their Own) so they wouldn’t be seen as lesbians. At the same time, the league told the teams NOT to market to lesbian fans as well! This is why I will never ever support the WNBA.

TRiG.

In Ireland there has been a similar story – the main sport there is Hurling, and one of the big stars, Donal og Cusack, came out 2 months ago. He has received loads of support from fans and players, the latter of whom just regard it as an insult that they are even asked if they accept Donal as he is. See this link for an interview with him on Irish TV – the stuff on his homosexuality comes about 9 minutes in, it’s in 3 parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT5DUTmNfXU

Of course most professional hockey players are from Canada, where equality is fully enshrined into law. Most of them are real class acts and aren’t heavily influenced by bible thumping the way football players are, so it doesn’t surprise me at all. I think the main thing holding pro hockey players back from coming out is the reaction of fans, not the locker room.

There are closeted NHLers out there as this OutSports story tells..

http://outsports.com/entertainment/20050218gumbybookexcerpt.htm