April 29, 2013

Finally, a gay male athlete comes out and he is ...

There has been much anticipation in the press that Real Soon Now an active major team sport jock would finally come out of the closet. But I've noticed that there has been an automatic assumption that he would turn out to be a good player -- you know, like, Tom Brady would announce that he had been living a lie, just going through the motions with Bridget Moynahan and Giselle Bundchen. 

But, what, I wondered, if the gay comer-outer turned out to be lousy? That's not exactly unprecedented. For example, when I was young, I was a big fan of the L.A. Dodgers during their pennant years of 1977-78. They had lots of fine ballplayers -- Sutton, Garvey, Cey, Lopes, Russell, Reggie Smith, Dusty Baker, and so forth -- and a terrible player, Glenn Burke. Well, eventually, Burke was traded to Oakland and then they cut him and then he came out of the closet and then died of AIDS. 

Ever since, you read about how he was a victim of prejudice, that that's what halted his baseball career. No, what hurt Burke's career was that he was no good. He was an outfielder/ first basemen who, at his peak in age 25 in 94 games hit .233 with 1 homer and 16 rbis. My recollection of Burke from listening to a lot of Dodger games on the radio was: "rally killer." For his career from age 23 to 26 his Wins Above Replacement number was -2.4. In other words, some random Triple A player would have been less deleterious to the Dodgers, but they kept giving him a chance to prove himself because he was fast and looked strong. (My vague impression is that Burke was assumed to be gay by Dodger management.)

The Collins Twins: Compare the facial
expressions. Which one looks gay?
So, today, NBA player Jason Collins announced to vast fanfare that he was gay. He is a 34-year-old seven-footer who, along with his 6'11" twin brother Jarron Collins, has been well-publicized since the 1990s, first at Harvard-Westlake (where actor Jason Segel was his back-up), then during four years at Stanford, where he finally developed into an effective Division I player as a senior, then as a #18 pick in the first round of the NBA draft. (I've often written about the Collins twins since I'm interested in twins for what they can teach us about human biodiversity. As I noted in Taki's three years ago, the Collins twins, like the NBA Lopez twins, are publicly agnostic on whether they are identical or fraternal twins.)

The Collins twins are a West Coast version of all those hated Duke basketball players from stable middle class backgrounds who stick around college for four years and learn to play team basketball, then go on to unimpressive NBA careers because they aren't super athletes. Personally, I like the Duke/Stanford model of recruiting athletes who aren't complete thugs and aren't totally out of place at an academic institution, but I'm in a minority.

As befits their middle class backgrounds and zillion dollar educations, the Collins twins are articulate. For example, when retired NBA player John Amaechi came out of the closet in 2007, amid much celebration of his bravery, I quoted Jarron pointing out:
"[Teammate Jarron] Collins' memory, though, is that Amaechi wasn't just indifferent toward his job, but irritated by it and the pro sports atmosphere. "He just wasn't interested in basketball, period," Collins said. "I never knew someone who just disliked the game. I would say that everyone has different motivations to play the game of basketball. John was very clear that money was his. But it really was like, he didn't like the game. It's kind of hard if you hate it." 

Amaechi was an example of how much some gay men don't like sports, even if they are being paid millions to play a sport. Amaechi was a 6'10" and 270 pound project from England who never developed because he despised practicing basketball as something that kept him away from visiting art galleries and his other interests, none of which had anything to do with sports.

I pointed out during the brief Amaechi whoop-tee-doo that the most likely gay male contact sport players would be guys who were given the rare genetic gifts to play whether or not they were obsessed with competitive sports, such as very tall basketball players. (In contrast, small, ferocious, over-achieving star athletes are unlikely to be gay. For example, I'm guessing that Wes Welker isn't gay. Let's see if he's married. Oh, indeed he is ... Mrs. Welker was formerly Miss Hooters.)

And what do you know? The next example of a team sport athlete coming out of the closet turns out to be another NBA big man.

My impression is that Jason Collins isn't a complete fraud like Amaechi was, that Collins is a conscientious professional athlete who worked hard at defense. Despite his height, he was never a shot blocker, but I believe he had good fundamentals on defense.

But he's still terrible at this stage in his career.

Jason's coming out of the closet is being given a big whoop-tee-do on the grounds that he is the first active male major team sport player to do so. But, "active" sounds like a stretch. In his just concluded season with two teams at age 34, he played only 384 minutes out of a possible 3936 or more.

Basketball-Reference has a handy "Per 36 minutes" section that projects out how well he would have done if he'd been allowed to play full time (and had not gotten tired or fouled out). Collins' 2012-13 per 36 minute stats are some of the worst I've ever seen. If he'd played 36 minutes per game, the seven-footer would have averaged 3.8 points per game, 5.6 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.9 blocks, and 8.0 personal fouls. His field goal percentage was .310!

Nate Silver, who isn't exactly unbiased, writes in the New York Times:
In some ways, that makes Mr. Collins’s decision to come out much braver. He would hardly have been guaranteed a job next year, regardless of his sexual orientation. If N.B.A. teams discriminate against him at all for being gay, that could keep him on the sidelines.

More skeptically, perhaps Jason Collins is trying to pressure the NBA into giving him one more year just to prove they aren't homophobic? Or this announcement could be calculated to help him do well on the public appearance circuit in his onrushing retirement. He can now look forward to several years of being paid to accept awards for his "bravery." Maybe this will get him a shot at a TV gig.

But, Jason, even before he got old, has never been very good (and 6'-11" Jarron, who has been out of the league for two years, was worse). A few weeks ago, commenter jody wrote:
when i was younger i didn't get this at first, and chuckled along when [ESPN] clowned players like [shawn] bradley. then after a while, i started to get it, and noticed they never ridiculed the goofy, clumsy, or just plain bad black players with nearly as much verve or ardor. and there are a lot of them. they screw up all the time too or have terrible careers. and the sports guys simply ignore it most of the time. 
i remember during some of bradley's later seasons, there were these twins in the league, jason collins and jarron collins, who were pure crap. yet they were 25 minute a game starters at center, and not one time ever were they clowned by ESPN or any sports writers. these two guys turned in a few seasons where they were playing 30 minutes a game and scoring 4 points or something ridiculous, the way erick dampier was for a couple years.

And that was back in their 20s when Jason and Jarron were young. Jason is old and extremely bad now, but being mediocre at his brief peak, then decrepit for years, and gay hasn't kept him from collecting $32,816,349 in salary over his career.

A sidelight is that this raises the question of concordance in terms of sexual identity among identical twins. (We don't know that the Collins' are identical, but that's the way to guess.) Jason writes in Sports Illustrated:
The first relative I came out to was my aunt Teri, a superior court judge in San Francisco. Her reaction surprised me. "I've known you were gay for years," she said....
It was around this time that I began noticing subtle differences between Jarron and me. Our twinness was no longer synchronized. I couldn't identify with his attraction to girls. ... 
I didn't come out to my brother until last summer. His reaction to my breakfast revelation was radically different from Aunt Teri's. He was downright astounded. He never suspected. So much for twin telepathy.

Northwestern U. psychologist J. Michael Bailey has done two studies of sexual orientation concordance among male identical twins. The first came up with an estimate of 50%, but Bailey became uncomfortable with the possibility that his figure was biased from how he'd recruited participants. So, he did another one using the national twin registry in Australia, and came up with, I believe, a figure of only around 22%. That is well above the single digit percentage you'd find if both nature and nurture among identical twins raised together had no effect and sexual orientation was completely random, but it's still strikingly low, meaning the causes of male homosexuality remain scientifically murky.

By the way, a half-dozen years ago I put up a post about Where are all the famous gay oldtime baseball players? After all, there is a vast literature devoted to the history of baseball, and yet few examples of old timers who turned out to be gay. A number of commenters wrote in to point out that everybody knows that a certain well-known hitter who is not quite a Hall of Famer (but was really good) is gay. This bon vivant was a media favorite during his long baseball career for his manners, charm, and superb taste in fine dining. In other words, he was an exemplar of some stereotypically gay virtues. But, he was not subject to many gay rumors, however, because most of the gay rumors are started by gays as sex fantasies, and this ballplayer was always a little on the plump side.

P.S., a commenter points out that Jason Collins still scores a zero on my Google Gaydar system of using Google's search prompts to see if anybody had been searching to see if he was gay. (Granted there are several Jason Collins out there, but the first prompt was NBA so he's the most prominent.) He's the kind of nice young gay man who doesn't loom large in gay fantasies.

By the way, I was recently cited as an authority on the TV show Red Eye by guest Gavin McInnes as the authority on the lack of gays among male golfers. Gavin slightly overstated my findings in saying there are "no" gay male golfers, but it is clear that in golf gay men are as rare, both at the professional and at the enthusiastic hobbyist level, as lesbians are common. As I pointed out in "Why Lesbians Aren't Gay" way back in 1994:
In roughly half the traits, homosexuals tend to more resemble the opposite sex than they do the rest of their own sex. For example, many heterosexual men and lesbian women are enthusiasts for golf, as well as other hit-a-ball-with-a-stick games like softball and pool. Lesbian-feminist sportswriter Mariah Burton Nelson recently estimated, not implausibly, that 30% of the Ladies Professional Golf Association women touring pros were lesbians. While such estimates are hard to verify, it's clear that the marketers at the LPGA desperately wish they had more mothers-of-three like Nancy Lopez, the most popular woman golfer ever: i.e., a victorious yet still feminine champion with whom other heterosexual women enjoy identifying. 
In contrast, pre-menopausal straight women and gay men typically find golf pointless. For example, despite incessant socialization toward golf, only one out of nine wives of PGA touring pros plays golf herself! And gay male golf fanatics are so rare that it's difficult to even come up with an exception that proves this rule (which might explain why golfers wear those god-awful pants).

Among famous gay male entertainers who are enthusiastic golfers, the only name that comes to mind is Johnny Mathis.

On the other hand, other country club sports, such as tennis (Bill Tilden and Hitler's favorite Baron Gottfried von Cramm) and diving (Greg Louganis), have gay male legends. I would hardly be surprised if the gay percentage in men's golf isn't at least as high as in baseball, but it's still low.

In summary, the weight of evidence illuminates much about the natures of masculinity and femininity, which are rather things to understand.

107 comments:

  1. I was going to say you might as well just recycle your Amechi article because you're explanation was spot on- rare physical gifts overcome an obsession with sport.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the next gay athlete comes from a sporting dynasty- where advantages in being exposed to the sport from an early age make up for a lack of sporting obsession.

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  2. and one terrible player, Glenn Burke.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Burke

    "They can't ever say now that a gay man can't play in the majors, because I'm a gay man and I made it." – Glenn Burke

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  3. Despite being HIV-positive for over twenty years, Magic Johnson has never come out of the closet.

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  4. He's got the "gay face"/"gay smile" thing that gays seem to have:

    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/news/20130429/jason-collins-gay-nba-player/#ixzz2Rrh8O559

    That face/expression should be scientifically studied. It seems to be a common phenotype of gays that appears in gays no matter the racial or ethnic background.

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  5. "I wouldn't be surprised if the next gay athlete comes from a sporting dynasty"

    So, maybe an NFL placekicker or punter who is the son of the same? By that logic, probably the big hope is an NFL quarterback whose father was a quarterback and paid for the best tutoring for his son.

    In contrast, some short guy with a dumpy body and zero pedigree in the sport who claws his way to the top out of an improbable will to win (e.g., Lee Trevino) is probably not gay.

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  6. "He's got the "gay face"/"gay smile" thing"

    Identical twin celebrities who are non-concordant would be excellent subjects to study for this since there are so many pictures of them. In that picture I posted, I'm guessing Jason the gay guy is the one closer to the camera.

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  7. "I was going to say you might as well just recycle your Amechi article because you're explanation was spot on- rare physical gifts overcome an obsession with sport."

    Frederick II syndrome

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  8. Emile Griffith was an outstanding
    boxer:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Griffith

    "Emile Alphonse Griffith (born February 3, 1938) is a former boxer who was the first fighter from the U.S. Virgin Islands ever to become a world champion. He is perhaps best known for his controversial third fight with Benny Paret in 1962 for the welterweight world championship. Griffith later won the world middleweight title and claimed an early version of the junior middleweight world championship, a claim that has not been universally recognized although some consider Griffith a three-division champion fighter."
    (...)

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  9. Northwestern psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern...

    I like your writing, but isn't that phrase a little redundant?

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  10. Identical twin celebrities who are non-concordant would be excellent subjects to study for this since there are so many pictures of them.

    Yes. They've done some studies of facial identification of gays, and I think the results showed that people are fairly good at identifying gays by their faces.

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  11. Despite being HIV-positive for over twenty years, Magic Johnson has never come out of the closet.

    His son, an NYU college student, was recently revealed to be gay.

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  12. His son, an NYU college student, was recently revealed to be gay.

    So what? Is there any good evidence that homosexuality runs in families?

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  13. His son, an NYU college student, was recently revealed to be gay.

    So what? Is there any good evidence that homosexuality runs in families?

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  14. Steve, how about doing a piece on the "on the down low" phenomenon and black homosexual frequency? I'd like to know more (or something at least).

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  15. Rugby players Ian Roberts (Rugby League, 1995) and Gareth Thomas (Rugby Union, 2009) both came out while still playing, albeit towards the end of their careers. Both were top class, or nearly top class players.

    I don't believe any football (soccer) player has ever come out while still playing, and I'm only aware of one (Justin Fashanu) doing so after retiring from the game.

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  16. On commentator Jody's comment, plenty of African American big men get mocked for goofy lowlights. Dampier, Kwame Brown, Javale McGee...

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  17. Gregg Lagunas was the best gay diver and the best US diver. That sport requires a lot of flexablity which may why it attacts some gays.

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  18. As of right now Jason Collins gets a 0/100 on your Google test. Sure that will change soon.

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  19. Divers also have to like having the eyes of the crowd on them while they stand in the spotlight wearing a tiny swimsuit.

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  20. So what? Is there any good evidence that homosexuality runs in families?

    Genes, germs, cultural practices, etc. are or can be transmitted from parent to child, obviously.

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  21. Was Greg Looseanus really the best US diver?

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  22. Its Bridget Moynahan who had Tom Brady's kid

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  23. "So what? Is there any good evidence that homosexuality runs in families?"

    Genes, germs, cultural practices, etc. are or can be transmitted from parent to child, obviously.


    You didn't answer the question, obviously.

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  24. Silver's the type who probably thinks that Obama's blackness counts against him, too. The reality is that this is a huge positive for Collins, who was virtually an anonymous figure before this. At a minimum he's guaranteed himself some media gigs once he's out of the league.

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  25. "Its Bridget Moynahan" not Michelle Monahan.

    Shhhh ... don't tell Giselle.

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  26. "Nate Silver, who isn't exactly unbiased, writes in the New York Times:

    In some ways, that makes Mr. Collins’s decision to come out much braver. He would hardly have been guaranteed a job next year, regardless of his sexual orientation. If N.B.A. teams discriminate against him at all for being gay, that could keep him on the sidelines."



    Somehow, I suspect Collins will face less discrimination for being gay than Tebow gets for being Christian. This despite that fact that 80% or so of the US is Christian and maybe only a couple pct are gay.

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  27. "Steve, how about doing a piece on the "on the down low" phenomenon and black homosexual frequency? I'd like to know more (or something at least)."

    This certainly exists in pro-sports, though occasionally having recreational sex with other players doesn't seem to be as stigmatizing as being outright homosexual, whatever the distinction might be. The practice, and the distinction, seems to be a byproduct of prison culture.

    One notable first-hand account came from a football player I knew from college who was signed as an undrafted free-agent in the mid aughts. One day during summer practices, a certain charismatic linebacker invited this guy to his house for dinner. When the rookie arrived, the linebacker escorted him down to his basement theater where they watched the linebacker's personal highlight reel on the big screen, the linebacker wearing nothing but his jockstrap the whole time. Despite the suggestive circumstances, nothing sexual ever happened. The rookie simply left. At practice the next day, thinking he'd been the butt of some elaborate practical joke, he asked another veteran teammate what the deal was. "Don't you know," the guy said. "[] is gay as fuck."

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  28. Steve,

    Why don't we see contemporary gays who are ultra-masculine, and love to dominate others, and who express this urge by cultivating team spot prowess? Historically, as you have pointed out, homosexuality was something strong men (active partners) did to weaker men (passive partners) to assert their dominance, and examples of macho gay warriors abound. Also, as you have noted, team sports are an expression same kind of male passion that we find in war.

    Here is a list of great gay warriors, with Alexander the most notable among them.

    I would add that Michelangelo, leading a group of artists to paint and sculpt on a grand scale under physically grueling conditions, had something of the team captain in him. Moreover, in prison culture it is common to become a leader of thugs by raping one's way to the top.

    I am told by gay friends that the powerful, dominant, and always active partner is well-known gay "type" today, so I wonder why so few (maybe none) of these folks are professional athletes.

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  29. But I've noticed that there has been an automatic assumption that he would turn out to be a good player -- you know, like, Tom Brady

    I think some were holding out hope for Roger Federer. ("Federer gay" 3,810,000 on Google).

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  30. You didn't answer the question, obviously.

    You're an idiot, so it looks like it'll have to be spelled out for you, obviously.

    Genes, germs, cultural practices, etc. tend to run in families. So if homosexuality is a result of one or more of those things, it may run in families to varying degrees.

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  31. "On commentator Jody's comment, plenty of African American big men get mocked for goofy lowlights. Dampier, Kwame Brown, Javale McGee"

    no they don't. get back to me when they say one single negative thing about hasheem thabeet, the biggest bust (literally and figuratively) in NBA history and his career 1 point per game average.

    erick dampier was never routinely mocked by white sports analysts. i have specifically and repeatedly, posted about how erick dampier regularly put up 2 points, or even 0 points, in critical playoff games that the mavericks lost, then the next day the white sports analysts immediately go back to bashing dirk nowitzki and "how you can never win with this guy" (subtle hint - he's white, stop trying to win with a white guy, it can't be done) despite the 30 point 12 rebound 3 block games in his prime. some of those close games they lost by 4 points or less. what if dampier had scored just 4 points, instead of 0?

    as far as i know erick dampier has only ever been mocked openly by shaquille o'neal who called him ericka dampier. white sports analysts went far, far, FAR out of their way to ignore his dozens of terrible games for the mavericks.

    he was overwhelmingly, beyond obviously THE main problem holding the mavericks back, yet the sports media stuck strictly to the "you can't win with dirk nowitzki (he's WHITE, duh)" mantra. any other great player, they immediately find the weak link in the team and demand stuff like "Lebron needs more help in Cleveland! Kobe needs more help in LA! These guys can't do it by themselves! Get them a better (player at whatever position)!" as soon as the mavericks got rid of erick dampier, they IMMEDIATELY won the NBA championship.

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  32. I never understood why gays have to "come out". Would it be too awkward to just be gay? Do hetero people ever make a public statement about their straightness? I guess it's all about them.

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  33. even lakers fans rarely mocked kwame brown, the second biggest bust (literally and figuratively) in NBA history. does anybody poke and prod and clown michael jordan for picking kwame brown? no, they do not.

    contrast this with the way lakers fans immediately attack pau gasol as soon as the lakers start losing. he's their go-to scapegoat for all things in the L column. when andrew bynum was on the lakers, it was the general opinion of lakers fans that bynum was the better player. which is preposterous. his only abilities are to grab rebounds that fall directly into his hands, or to hit point blank dunks if he's right under the basket. i watched this for years, it's not like some throw away comment i add here simply to make my argument sound more credible.

    andrew bynum just conned the philadelphia 76ers out of 16 million dollars, and didn't play a single minute for them this season. was he routinely mocked for his in the US sports media? NO. NO HE WAS NOT. they mentioned it briefly and moved on to the next story.

    what's most funny is how everybody expected dwight howard to crush pau gasol in the 2009 NBA championships. i mean, this was dwight howard, the 2008 NBA slam dunk champion, superman, the huge, awesome black guy who was going to utterly smash the stiff, soft white guy. he was going to dunk it on this white guy's head over and over. it was thought, for sure, that if the magic had a match up advantage in this series, that was it. if nothing else, this euro softy was gonna get posterized, he was gonna get highlight reel dunks on his face that would be replayed on ESPN for years.

    yet gasol outplayed howard head to head and the lakers won the championship. in fact, as soon as gasol got to the lakers, they went to the NBA finals 3 times in a row, saving kobe bryant's career. humorously, as soon as they started NOT going to the finals every single year in a row, it was gasol's fault.

    fast forward only a few years later and career underachiever dwight howard is now on the same team, missing 50% of his free throws with few guffaws from the white sportscaster peanut gallery. he rebuffed teammate steve nash's offer to help him improve, because, well, why not, nash is only the number 1 or 2 free throw shooter in NBA history, what could he know about shooting free throws.

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  34. Louganis was the best American diver ever. Nobody before him compared.

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  35. You didn't answer the question, obviously.

    You're an idiot, so it looks like it'll have to be spelled out for you, obviously.

    Genes, germs, cultural practices, etc. tend to run in families. So if homosexuality is a result of one or more of those things, it may run in families to varying degrees.


    Sure, it may runs in families, but has any evidence been found, study done showing a correlation of homosexuality as to families?

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  36. Here comes Steve Sailer with his pelican-like second chin flapping as he yammers away. Nothing can make Steve angrier than someone saying he or she is gay. Get a fucking life dumbass! Who are you to say what someone else's experience is when you are in some dark corner of the internet writing angry rants?

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  37. I find the whole thing rather tedious.

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  38. Louganis was the best American diver ever. Nobody before him compared.

    Dr. Sammy Lee, Louganis' coach!

    Sad news

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  39. 'He's got the "gay face"/"gay smile" thing that gays seem to have:'

    I noticed this too. He's got that expression as seen on the face of the "There's a sale at Penney's!" guy on Airplane.

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  40. they do make fun of javale mcgee. he's so retarded it's impossible not to. but my original statement stands. they do not pick out the bad, bumbling plays by black players, or ride the ass of black players having terrible careers, with NEARLY the aplomb and glee with which they find the screw ups and posterizations of white players. the collins brothers sucked for years and were never mentioned or singled out for ridicule, ever. meanwhile they couldn't wait to clown guys like greg ostertag, who played a little better and blocked shots well.

    anybody who doesn't detect an obvious agenda to mock and humiliate white male athletes in the US sports media isn't paying attention. it wasn't always there, but over the last 20 years, and especially the last 10, it has become intense. it's basic cultural marxism, which has come along with the promotion of know nothing, airhead women to the top of the sportscasting world. now almost every gig requires a good looking but sports disinterested woman somewhere on the staff and in front of the camera.

    terrible career play by black athletes in several sports is just plain swept under the rug. it's so bad in the NFL it has become comical. every year now the NFL drafts colossal busts in the first round who's careers of sheer futility are simply flushed down the memory hole in a few seasons, with no further mention. meanwhile, prominent busts of a different, er, hue, are enthusiastically recalled and remembered. it's the same exact media tactic as crime reporting.

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  41. Has anyone done a fraternal twin study to see if the homosexual correlation is the same as with identical twins? I find it plausible that babies who get too much estrogen or some other hormone during gestation might be prone to homosexuality. If that were a cause rather than genetics, then fraternal and identical twins would have similar correlation rates.

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  42. contrast this with the way lakers fans immediately attack pau gasol as soon as the lakers start losing. he's their go-to scapegoat for all things in the L column.

    This is just factually incorrect. Dwight Howard, not Gasol, has been attacked this season for the Lakers' woes.

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  43. Has anyone done a fraternal twin study to see if the homosexual correlation is the same as with identical twins? I find it plausible that babies who get too much estrogen or some other hormone during gestation might be prone to homosexuality. If that were a cause rather than genetics, then fraternal and identical twins would have similar correlation rates.

    It's not estrogen, but antibodies against the Y Chromosome in the womb.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-173878/Boys-big-brothers-likely-gay.html

    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2120218&page=1#.UX8WDMocNFs

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  44. Steve, how about doing a piece on the "on the down low" phenomenon and black homosexual frequency? I'd like to know more (or something at least).

    When over 1/4 of all black males wind up in prison at some point, down low becomes a rite of passage. Black lesbian gang members are not uncommon either.

    On the gaydar/who's gay discussion, let's face it, nobody sets it off like Kenny Chesney.



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  45. "A number of commenters wrote in to point out that everybody knows that a certain well-known hitter who is not quite a Hall of Famer (but was really good) is gay. This bon vivant was a media favorite during his long baseball career for his manners, charm, and superb taste in fine dining."

    Rusty Staub, Le Grande Orange ?

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  46. I heard about this on NPR today as I was driving. The piece was mostly fluff, but there was something chilling in Mike Pesca's celebratory comments about the possibility that Collins will be the first openly gay man to walk into an NBA locker room. I am not particularly homophobic, but that's effing creepy on so many levels.

    I was amazed that the White House released a statement on the matter. I couldn't help but stand in awe of the golfer-in-chief's wit. Who else could give us such a pithy summation of the trivialities of modern American political culture. Seriously. A guy who plays a GAME for a living receives a PRESIDENTIAL commendation merely for writing an article about how he likes to f*ck other guys.

    This makes Keith Olbermann's fellatory paean to uncle Ruslan come of as a well-deserved tribute.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  47. I was amazed that the White House released a statement on the matter.

    To be fair, Collins is one of his people, in more ways than one.

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  48. Another Anon4/29/13, 6:45 PM

    "Anonymous said...
    contrast this with the way lakers fans immediately attack pau gasol as soon as the lakers start losing. he's their go-to scapegoat for all things in the L column.

    This is just factually incorrect. Dwight Howard, not Gasol, has been attacked this season for the Lakers' woes."

    Yup, I don't even follow hoops ... and I am aware that they (the media ..both Black and White commentators) have been riding Howard and blaming him for all the Laker problems.

    For about a month every time I tuned into a sports channel (my sport is American football)... some guest on the program would start trashing Howard.

    Since I hardly watch hoops ever... he has my sympathy.

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  49. Saying that Collins came out when he did to save his paycheck reminds me of Anderson Cooper's coming out right before the big shake up at CNN.

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  50. To be fair, Collins is one of his people, in more ways than one.

    If Obama had a son, he would look like Collins.

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  51. Steve,
    He really wasn't looking for an answer. He just was looking for an excuse to say "Looseanus", lol!

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  52. His career average is 3.6 ppg 3.8 rpg. His “career year” seems to be 2004-5 with the New Jersey Nets, where he averaged 6.4/6.1 while playing an average of 31:48 per game (NBA regulation game clock is 48 minutes). So while playing two-thirds of every game that season on average, seven foot and 255 pounds of man averaged a big 6.4 points and a big 6.1 rebounds a game, and that was his BEST year. For the past six seasons, he’s just been taking up space.

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  53. How soon before "Mr." Collins gets invited to the White House to play a little private basketball with the Alien in Chief?

    I wonder if Michelle watches?

    MDR

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  54. "To be fair, Collins is one of his people, in more ways than one."

    lol. I see what you did there.

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  55. Dampier played well when Dallas won the title iirc.

    Jody is right though. White big men much more mocked as are white Bball players in general.

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  56. "Somehow, I suspect Collins will face less discrimination for being gay than Tebow gets for being Christian. This despite that fact that 80% or so of the US is Christian and maybe only a couple pct are gay."


    Exactly; and less discrimination than Tebow for being a minority. The BS that passes for societal truths from the media and schools is truly obscene.

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  57. Sailer, so you are trying to correlate athleticism with heterosexuality? This is faulty reasoning, because Collins is still better than 99.9999% of all straight men at basketball. Explain that?

    And you are not "elucudating" anything about madculinity and femininity. Everyone knows that gay men on average are less masculine than straight men, and that lesbians tend to be more masculine than straight women. The difference is that some people such as myself don't make value-judgements about these things, nor do we think that the law should divide people into first-class and second-class citizens based on this.

    And Collins is 10 X the athlete and 100 X the man that you are, Sailer.

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  58. Thanks to Sports Illustrated, millions of people are now having the following vital dialogue.

    "Who 's Jason Collins?"

    "I dunno."

    "Me neither."

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  59. I walked into a room in which the tv was on this morning. There on the screen was a black male, handsome in an All American, clean-cut way. I had no idea who he was or what the topic of the conversation was for the first 30 seconds except that I caught the words "basketball" and "Celtics" and so in an instant I concluded, incorrectly so, that the conversation was about the basketball playoffs which I knew to be underway this week.

    I assumed the young black man was a tv sports announcer and I also concluded he was gay after listening to him for a half a minute or so.

    Within the next half minute the words "sexual orientation" were mentioned, and at this point I paid closer attention to the man on the screen and to what he and an interviewer were discussing--his "coming out."

    So, before knowing who this guy was, and before knowing anything about his sexuality, I had concluded he was a gay man simply by hearing him speak for a few seconds.

    He went on to speak of his fear over the years of being found out, of his being so stressed about it that there were many times when he'd go home convinced that he had done something that day that "looked gay" or "sounded gay" and so he'd pull out tapes of his playing to see if he could determine one way or the other if he indeed had done something that "looked or sounded gay" because he had tried so hard to look and sound straight.

    I wondered, therefore, if the voice and vocal quality I was hearing in the interview was how he always talked, or if when he was trying to hide his gayness, he sounded different because as I said, there was no doubt in my mind his was the speaking voice of a gay man. There is a soft quality, a kind of precision when he ended his words (I could hear the last letter clearly) that is so common to gay males. One might be tempted to say that educated males sound this way. Well, I suppose some do, but most do not. An educated straight man sounds different than an educated gay man in the same way gay men just sound different than straight men, no matter their education.

    I believe that when they discover what part of the brain has been impacted resulting in a gay male, they'll also find some neurochemical involved in speech. I don't think the speaking and vocal quality are, as some claim, simply socialization, an attempt by gay men to sound a certain way in order to be recognized by other gay men. I'm convinced speech is affected by whatever it is that causes the homosexuality in the first place.

    Anyone who has spent time around a lot of very young little boys can identify this different speaking/vocal quality, even when it is subtle, and it presents long before the little boy cares anything about signaling others about his sexuality.

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  60. con't.

    The gay lobby loves to point out that gay males can be masculine and play sports (like Jason Collins, and they maintain you can't tell a gay male most of the time and that you certainly can't tell a gay athlete from a straight athlete. Yes, you can. They sound different. I forget the name of the Samoan who used to be a big lineman in the NFL. Heard him on a talk show years ago--took 5 seconds to "hear the gay." Johnny Mathis was quite the track star and is a fine golfer--can anyone not "hear the gay" in his voice? Rusty Staub, the former Met and Montreal Expo who was a fine hitter, and was/is, as Steve pointed out w/out using his name, a bit plump, in a Ruthian sort of way, "sounds gay." The first time I heard Greg Louganis speak at his first Olympics, I knew he was gay--he has the "gay voice." None of these men is the little waif of an ice skater, the flamboyant Johnny Weir. They are otherwise straight-looking men in what we think of as straight, manly sports, yet they "sound gay."

    When these athletes who are gay were little boys, I assure you, you could "hear the gay."

    I'm interested in what science one day finds...not only what takes place to cause this (like a growing number, I find the germ theory a fairly likely bet) but most interesting to me is what causes the gay voice. I am convinced there's a biological reason for it while supposing that socialization and signaling can make it more prominent.

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  61. "Despite being HIV-positive for over twenty years, Magic Johnson has never come out of the closet."

    Magic's got the "gay voice" and many of the personality traits as well, and his son just came out, although the son is so flamboyant that there was no doubt about his orientation anyway.

    The trait does cluster in some families. There's obviously an environmental trigger and probably a genetic susceptibility to it.

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  62. So what? Is there any good evidence that homosexuality runs in families?
    ______________________________

    Yes, some "clustering," according to most research, but not to the point it tells us much.

    This doesn't mean genes cause it There is no evidence for that at all; in fact, with each study, more and more evidence has mounted that genes don't. This isn't at all surprising since genes wouldn't code for reduced reproductive fitness. However, there are likely familial genotypes more susceptible than others to the environmental trigger which causes homosexuality.

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  63. "I am told by gay friends that the powerful, dominant, and always active partner is well-known gay "type" today, so I wonder why so few (maybe none) of these folks are professional athletes.
    ___________________________________

    You must always remember that gay men have a different perception of masculinity than straight men (and straight men and women.)

    A buff guy is seen as masculine by the gay male even if "a purse falls out of his mouth," as the saying goes.

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  64. "In some ways, that makes Mr. Collins’s decision to come out much braver. He would hardly have been guaranteed a job next year, regardless of his sexual orientation. If N.B.A. teams discriminate against him at all for being gay, that could keep him on the sidelines."
    ______________________________

    ESPN will hire him as their resident gay, probably using him to analyze basketball. Of course, the other networks might just hire him first. Can you see him next to Sir Charles?

    Anyway, the networks will be so proud of themselves for being so hip.

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  65. The best takeaway from this article is the suffering of Utah Jazz fans, and the waste of Stockton/Malone in their last few years: i.e. they played with a Collins brother and Amaechi ("played" may be euphemistic here) in their last two seasons as Jazz players.

    Malone and Stockton had incredible longevity -- I remember that Malone was still able to stand toe to toe with a prime Chris Webber in 2002, and Stockton may have been the best player in the Sac/Utah series of that same year -- so it's rather depressing. Is it glass half full or empty? Terrible rosters with the two best players on it nearing or over 40, yet they still managed about 45 wins in those last two years.

    Imagine if they still had some surrounding talent...(Kirilenko was good but very raw offensively and...I guess Donyell Marshal or a young Harpring were decent; but as third options?!?)

    The real question in any team sport, I suppose, is whether the team is as great as its best player or as bad as its worst.

    Now imagine a team with two or three John Amaechis. Somewhere -- probably at the NY Times -- someone is salivating at the thought.

    I'm sure the NBA and other pro sports are convinced that they can lead on tolerance. But that's a pretty big "if": the Jackie Robinson Standard only works for gays *if* you can find at least one great (openly) gay player. If there are about a dozen mediocre or awful players in any given sport that are only known for bad plays and, then, being gay, well, what is this going to accomplish in the public sphere?

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  66. This ongoing screed against the way white NBA players are "mocked" in the media is getting increasingly bizarre.

    "get back to me when they say one single negative thing about hasheem thabeet..."

    Type Hasheem Thabeet into Google; the autofill is:

    Hasheem Thabeet draft
    Hasheem Thabeet bust

    Type Kwame Brown into Google; the autofill is:

    Kwame Brown draft
    Kwame Brown stats
    Kwame Brown sucks


    Type Shawn Bradley into Google...you won't see the words bust, sucks, overrated, or anything even remotely pejorative anywhere on the list.

    (I'll concede that Shawn Bradley was probably unfairly mocked, but his is a unique case. No center in memory has been so routinely and aggressively dunked on. The term "posterized" seems to have been invented just for Shawn Bradley.)

    The rest of your examples are completely unfounded. Pau Gasol is scapegoated? What bizarro sports station are you listening to? Dwight Howard has been the villain since the day he arrived in LA.

    And who was ever bashing Dirk Nowitzki? There was a time before the Mavs won the championship that he was considered a defensive liability, but whatever criticism he faced was equally applied to comparable black peers. Vince Carter, Allen Iverson, and Tracy McGrady were all saddled with the "can't win a championship" label at some point during their careers.

    Any evidence you can provide to back up your claims would be nice.



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  67. "Has anyone done a fraternal twin study to see if the homosexual correlation is the same as with identical twins?"

    Yes, while the concordance for monozygotic twins is only 25%, the concordance for dizygotic is much lower, but I can't recall the figure. You can google it but you have to look at the most recent studies since older studies had small sample sizes and questionable methodology. Check J. Michael Baily's homepage at Northwestern.

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  68. It's not estrogen, but antibodies against the Y Chromosome in the womb.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-173878/Boys-big-brothers-likely-gay.html

    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2120218&page=1#.UX8WDMocNFs
    ______________________________________

    The supposed "older brother effect" as this hypothesis has been called (wherein the youngest male of a large group of sons is more likely to be gay than his older brothers) has been disputed by some studies that didn't find the effect (while other studies feel they replicated it), but even if this effect is real accounts for only 7% of homosexuality.

    The press doesn't know how to write article on science; they only care to write blaring, misleading headlines.

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  69. This is faulty reasoning, because Collins is still better than 99.9999% of all straight men at basketball. Explain that?

    Um, perhaps it's because he's TALLER than 99.9999% of all straight men? (And gay men, too.)

    Incidentally, Jason Collins is basically the same player that Greg Kite was. Collins got more minutes per game, although it's hard to see why when looking at the stats.

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  70. "I heard about this on NPR today as I was driving. The piece was mostly fluff, but there was something chilling in Mike Pesca's celebratory comments about the possibility that Collins will be the first openly gay man to walk into an NBA locker room. I am not particularly homophobic, but that's effing creepy on so many levels.

    I was amazed that the White House released a statement on the matter. I couldn't help but stand in awe of the golfer-in-chief's wit. Who else could give us such a pithy summation of the trivialities of modern American political culture. Seriously. A guy who plays a GAME for a living receives a PRESIDENTIAL commendation merely for writing an article about how he likes to f*ck other guys."
    ________________________

    As if Obama's comments weren't ridiculous enough (hey, if YOU had an economy like this, and Benghazi, and the Boston Bombers, and now the scandal with the minority farmers, wouldn't you rather talk about the wonderfulness of an not well-known athlete coming out?) former Prez Creepy Billy also wrote a press release getting a lot of play on tv. His daughter Chelsea also wrote a piece on her gay friend Jason as she attended Stanford with him. Seems Jason has a lot of friends in high places willing to use him for some high profile publicity.

    Courage? Nah. Good marketing strategy.

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  71. "Saying that Collins came out when he did to save his paycheck reminds me of Anderson Cooper's coming out right before the big shake up at CNN."

    You got that right. His program was drawing horrid numbers but he stayed. They were afraid to fire the gay guy.

    BTW, speaking of gay face--Cooper has the gay giggle.

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  72. Poor Nicky Diaz is at it again.

    Steve didn't make value judgements, Nicky, but you seem to have done so.

    Why do you follow the blog of a man whose writing and insights you so dislike. Why torment yourself?

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  73. They don't look like identical twins in that photo, Steve.

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  74. As I said, when I looked it up, both the the Collins and Lopez twins from Stanford and the NBA said they hadn't had genetic tests and didn't have a public opinion on the identical v. fraternal question.

    The odds of twins both being at least 6'11" and not monozygotic, however, seem quite small.

    Many identical twins have somewhat unrealistic notions of how different they are from each other.

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  75. ESPN will hire him as their resident gay, probably using him to analyze basketball.

    Just basketball or all ball sports?

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  76. The supposed "older brother effect" as this hypothesis has been called (wherein the youngest male of a large group of sons is more likely to be gay than his older brothers) has been disputed by some studies that didn't find the effect (while other studies feel they replicated it), but even if this effect is real accounts for only 7% of homosexuality.

    The press doesn't know how to write article on science; they only care to write blaring, misleading headlines.


    I'll trust the real world over soft science "studies" completely dependent on self-reporting. Also, if they are more likely, how can they only account for 7%? Are most gay men from one male child households?

    Regardless, this is a generally accepted phenomenon in the gay community. But more importantly, I think it has a stronger affect on masculinity than of homosexuality. The Bomb Brothers are an example.

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  77. "ESPN will hire him as their resident gay, probably using him to analyze basketball."

    Since his playing career is winding down, maybe this was Collins' plan entirely.

    ReplyDelete
  78. It's easy to imagine Obama putting out a call to gay colonels and generals: "Come out of the closet and I'll give you 4 stars AND put you in charge of invading Iran."

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  79. "The supposed "older brother effect" as this hypothesis has been called (wherein the youngest male of a large group of sons is more likely to be gay than his older brothers) has been disputed by some studies that didn't find the effect (while other studies feel they replicated it), but even if this effect is real accounts for only 7% of homosexuality."


    My personal view (which granted is not a thorough, high 'n' sociological study, but nevertheless seems to have some accuracy) is that it is guys who have older sister(s), but not older brothers. Granted, not all guys who have older sisters will be this way (and possibly even most will not), but from what I have observed, more often than not, the more effeminate guys have tended to fall into this category- they all had older sister(s) but not brothers. Which makes sense- they try to emulate their older sister, they play with her toys, become socialized around her and her friends, idolize them as the way to be, etc.

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  80. More skeptically, perhaps Jason Collins is trying to pressure the NBA into giving him one more year just to prove they aren't homophobic? Or this announcement could be calculated to help him do well on the public appearance circuit in his onrushing retirement.

    I hate to disappoint, but Collins may be retiring after this season to transition to a new career as gay advocate or tv pundit. former MLS and USMNT soccer player Robbie Rogers came out too this year before promptly retiring to pursue other interests.

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/us-soccer-player-robbie-rogers-comes-out-as-gay-retires/

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  81. Emile Griffith was a milliner whose boss (a part-time boxing promoter) saw his cut body one day in the factory, after Griffith had stripped off his shirt, because it was hot. I mean, the weather was hot, but so was Griffith. He never really liked boxing and loved designing hats. I am not joking, look it up. I don't think the boss was gay, although the story is totally gay.

    Gay male players in team sports is the opposite of straight male ballet dancers. Most of them got pushed into it by stage parents or some quirk of life.

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  82. I had thought that this was a plan to manipulate a team into hiring him, as well, but on 2nd thought, it's a smart career move into a 2nd career as a gay advocate.

    This is an interesting career path: the professional homosexual. In that regard, as in many ways, we follow the Mother Country, which has had an honorable career path for poofs: the Grand Old English Homosexual.

    But as Americans, we're gonna do it our way, and our pro-homos will not have the wit or the style of the English ones. They'll be painfully earnest bores. They may even manage to turn the public off to homosexuality. It will be fun to watch.

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  83. Google has apparently caught on to Google GAYDAR and has broken it. If you try "John Gielgud " it doesn't return "gay" as an option, not even it you type "John Gielgud G". (This was one of Sailer's test cases.) I've got to get to "Tom Cruise ga" before I get anything gay related with Cruise.

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  84. OK, I finally read his article in SI and he also announced he's black.

    He really had me fooled on that one!

    (I can't wait to see how many Google predicts there will be for "Jason Collins sucks...")

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  85. "Google has apparently caught on to Google GAYDAR and has broken it."

    Yup. Google broke Google Gaydar. I can't even get Google to prompt "gay" for "Harvey Fierstein".

    Sometimes with Google, I've noticed that stuff disappears for awhile and then comes back. For example, my posts frequently don't show up on Google searches even when I enter huge amounts of detail. Then, the next day, hesto presto, they're back! Plausible deniability.

    My guess is that this kind of thing isn't some conspiracy that goes all the way to the top. Instead, it's just that the insides of Google are a big ball of twine, and individual workers who have control over chunks of the code can amuse themselves by screwing with you for awhile, but not permanently. They can just drive down your hits for X number of hours per day without anybody being able to prove it.

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  86. "ESPN will hire him as their resident gay, probably using him to analyze basketball."

    Yes, he would like to ANALyze the game.

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  87. Though married, Lougainis's colleague on the TV show Splash David Boudia, has the gay face and gay voice.

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  88. The problem with calling attention to Google screwing around is that everybody just kind of hopes that they really aren't evil, like they say they're not, because if they are, whaddaya whaddaya?

    My theory that Google isn't a single conscious organized entity, but instead is actually a whole bunch of separate fiefdoms, each of which has some ability to screw with people they don't like for X% of the time but not 100% of the time is totally off the radar at present.

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  89. Ah, it still works with BING! So Bing GAYDAR it is! Fuck you, Google!

    (I made the previous anonymous comment about this topic.)

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  90. I was a teacher at Amaechi's old school a few years ago when he came to present prizes at the end of the school year and to pass on a few words of wisdom to the pupils. I was quite surprised to hear him bemoan the bullying he received during his school days, thinking it somewhat improbable. His coming out of the closet shortly afterwards explained a lot.

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  91. Peter the Shark4/30/13, 10:55 AM

    When I was growing up in DC in the 70s it was common knowledge that our neighbor tight end (sic) Jerry Smith was gay. And then he died of AIDS a decade later so the rumors were apparently correct. There have been a lot of gay football players, it's surprising how the league has kept that under wraps so long. Baseball and golf definitely seem like the least gay sports.

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  92. Peter the Shark4/30/13, 10:56 AM

    "I wouldn't be surprised if the next gay athlete comes from a sporting dynasty- where advantages in being exposed to the sport from an early age make up for a lack of sporting obsession."

    Are you claiming Eli Manning is gay? Wouldn't surprise me to tell the truth.

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  93. regarding the older brother or "fraternal birth order" effect--


    This study by Francis did NOT find having multiple older brothers rose to a level of scientific significance:

    (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490802398357#.UYAFt4zn-tU


    "Using a nationally representative sample of young adults, I identify the family-demographic correlates of sexual orientation in men and women. Hence, I test the maternal immune hypothesis, which posits that the only biodemographic correlate of male homosexuality is the number of older brothers, and there are no biodemographic correlates of female homosexuality. For men, I find that having one older brother does not raise the likelihood of homosexuality. Although having multiple older brothers has a positive coefficient, it is not significant. Moreover, having any older sisters lowers the likelihood of homosexual or bisexual identity. For women, I find that having an older brother or having any sisters decreases the likelihood of homosexuality. Family structure, ethnicity, and education are also significantly correlated with male and female sexual orientation. Therefore, the maternal immune hypothesis cannot explain the entire pattern of family-demographic correlates. The findings are consistent with either biological or social theories of sexual orientation."


    On the other hand, previous studies have found the effect, but note the third sentence which claims it explains 1/7th of all male homosexuality (I was wrong in saying 7%--this would make it approx. 14%):


    From Wiki--

    "The fraternal birth order effect is the strongest known biodemographic predictor of sexual orientation.[3] According to several studies, each older brother increases a man's odds of having a homosexual orientation by 28–48%.[4][5][6][7][8] The fraternal birth order effect accounts for approximately one seventh of the prevalence of homosexuality in men.[9] There seems to be no effect on sexual orientation in women, and no effect related to the number of older sisters.[10][11]

    The fraternal birth order effect has also been observed among male-to-female transsexuals: MtF transsexuals who are sexually interested in men have a greater number of older brothers than MtF transsexuals who are sexually interested in women. This has been reported in samples from Canada,[12] the United Kingdom,[13] the Netherlands,[14] and Polynesia.[15]

    The effect has been found even in males not raised with their biological brothers, suggesting an in-utero environmental causation..."

    The part about transsexuality is interesting.

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  94. Steve, that's how I see Google too. I've dealt with their fiddling from the other end, trying to help web sites figure out why they've disappeared from the search results and get them to show up again. It's always a moving target, and what one Google tech tells you (when you can get them to tell you anything) will be contradicted by the next one. Each new release of their search algorithm kills a handful of web sites that their last release bumped to the top. It's a mess, but not a very coordinated one.

    I mostly use Duck Duck Go, which tries to emphasize quality of results over quantity, and reduce duplicate results. When it doesn't give me enough, I still go to Google to see what else it can turn up. I've stopped using most of their other services though, except for Reader -- which was excellent, but they're shutting it down.

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  95. JeremiahJohnbalaya4/30/13, 2:15 PM

    I caught a few segments of ESPN where they mentioned his story and showed nothing but several very aggressive dunks by Collins.

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  96. Jerry Smith had an affair with Dave Kopay. Remember him?

    Smith had really gay hair.

    Kwame Harris beat up an ex BF. They were fighting over soy sauce.

    I agree that the ungayest sports are baseball & golf.

    What about Rafa Nadal?

    This is getting to be fun.

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  97. Rusty Staub? I thought you were describing George Brett - good hitter, pudgy, from that era. I still remember his hissy fit over the umpire measuring his pine tar mark against home plate, watching a grown man cry over a bat.

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  98. Probably the best gay golfer is Jose Maria Olazabal - 2 time Masters champion. He was hanging out with his boyfriend/partner at the Ryder Cup at medinah. It is an open secret, nobody cares.

    The only gay football player I know of was Mike Tomczak, qb for the Bears, Steelers and some other teams. But he would pull "I'm not really gay" card after sleeping with a dude. But there were a lt of dudes I hear.

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  99. George Brett? George Brett was never pudgy. Further, he liked the ladies a lot.

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  100. Maybe he's not gay at all. Maybe he is only pretending to be gay for the same reason gay actors pretend to be straight: they feel pretending enhances their public image. He's nearing retirement from the NBA, and maybe he doesn't want to end up as a crossing guard: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2013/03/20/adrian-dantley-former-nba-star-says-crossing-guard-job-is-meaningful-way-to-fill-his-days/

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  101. Sailer, so you are trying to correlate athleticism with heterosexuality? This is faulty reasoning, because Collins is still better than 99.9999% of all straight men at basketball. Explain that?

    Are you the same moron who was comparing Poles and Swedes in Hollywood vs. Mexicans? Dude, your reasoning is faulty, Jason Collins is not a fantasic athlete because he is a scrub in the NBA, he is in the NBA because of his exceptional height and size, if he had been of average height/size but had the same level of athleticism he would never been able to play pro sports. His nearly seven foot height got him into pro sports, being tall doesn't make you athletic. To touch on Shawn Bradley again, you probably could have found guys walking on any American street that were better athletes than he was, yet never played pro sports, Bradley was in the league because he was 7ft. 6 inches tall. Spud Webb made it in the NBA because of his incredible speed and quickness, off the charts quickness, because he was 5ft 8.

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  102. "Personally, I like the Duke/Stanford model of recruiting athletes who aren't complete thugs and aren't totally out of place at an academic institution, but I'm in a minority."

    2 things:
    1. if you don't like basketball players "who aren't complete thugs" then you like 95% of basketball players
    2. lance thomas, a member of duke's 2010 championship team recieved $100k worth of jewerly while at duke. he made a 30k down-payment in cash. he's (lower) middle-class so, um, uh er..... http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/blog/eye-on-college-basketball/22170661/ncaa-duke-faces-no-punishment-in-lance-thomas-jewelry-case

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  103. The 6'6" Tommy Tune, born 1939 in Texas, winner of 9 Tony Awards as a song and dance man and choreographer, could likely have played in the NBA in the 1960s if he was interested in basketball. When asked why he wasn't a basketball player, he replied, "I liked the choreography but I hated the costumes."

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  104. "Poor Nicky Diaz is at it again.

    Steve didn't make value judgements, Nicky, but you seem to have done so.

    Why do you follow the blog of a man whose writing and insights you so dislike. Why torment yourself?"

    -Because he wants to try to annoy us. The problem is, he never seems to realize that we are laughing at him, not with him

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  105. If Obama had a son, he would look like Collins.

    LMAO...I see what you did there too!!!!

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  106. To Anon at 12:57 who said, "? Dude, your reasoning is faulty, Jason Collins is not a fantasic athlete because he is a scrub in the NBA, he is in the NBA because of his exceptional height and size...."

    Using "dude" on a site frequented by adults doesn't establish masculinity, street cred, or whatever it is you think it establishes. (I assume you already know it doesn't suggest intelligence.)



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  107. "Probably the best gay golfer is Jose Maria Olazabal - 2 time Masters champion. He was hanging out with his boyfriend/partner at the Ryder Cup at medinah. It is an open secret, nobody cares."

    So it is true? I just thought Jose Maria was a bit like Seve, who lived with his mama and papa and started his family a little late.

    I like Jose Maria.

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