Posted on 04/12/2005 5:41:22 PM PDT by missyme
openly gay male athletes participating in sports, but nearly 24 percent think an openly gay athlete would hurt their team, according to an NBC/USA Network poll.
The mixed results of the survey on American attitudes toward gay athletes appear in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, which hits newsstands Wednesday. Of the 979 people interviewed, 86 percent agreed it is OK for openly gay men to play sports, but some seemed to back off when asked if that could hurt their team.
"It was like, I'm OK with this, but if you press me, I have some doubts," said Doug Schoen, whose firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, conducted the poll.
The views of athletes also seem to be mixed when they are asked about the issue. When Esera Tuaolo came out after his NFL playing career ended, Sterling Sharpe said his former teammate was smart to hide his sexuality.
"Had he come out on a Monday, with Wednesday, Thursday and Friday practices, he'd have never gotten to the other team," Sharpe said.
But Reds outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. said he wouldn't have a problem accepting a gay teammate.
"Wouldn't bother me at all. If you can play, you can play," he said.
In another mixed result from the poll, 79 percent of respondents agreed Americans are more accepting of gays in sports today than they were 20 years ago. But 62 percent agreed the reason there is so little coverage of gays in sports is that America is not ready to accept gay athletes.
Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates conducted interviews among the general population from March 18-21. The margin of error sampling is +/- 3.1 overall.
Yeah, until the guy gets a stiffy in the showers and locker room. And then the teams all have to construct special locker rooms for the gays to prevent them from getting stiffy looking at the straight guys. Yeah my language is crude, but it's true. Prove me wrong.
Must America eventually "accept" gay athletes? Is this some new law of nature?
No you are proven right....
Lesbian Code: "She is heavily involved in the World Of Women's Golf"
You are correct. It truly doesnt make any difference about a gay playing the game, but how many athletes would want this guy looking at them and licking his lips in the shower.
How many women golfers want a mutilated male showering with them after a pro golf game.
As a Christian I think there is only one position to take on this issue: hate the sin, love the sinner. This does not involve legal or sacred contracts the way the marriage issue does.
I perfectly understand why a player would not want a gay teammate. It would upset the team chemistry which is essential to the success of a team.
There are gays in every branch of sports already, including Formula One and NA$CAR. Like sensible people, they have realized that they have not been hired to have sex in public, and they keep their mouths shut and do their jobs. If more men would take this attitude and not try to make every venue in the world into a bordello, people would neither know nor care what other people think about sex.
It kind of amused me to hear all the Ice Skaters deny that there were any gays in ice skating, and then they all start dying of AIDS.
Get a clue: we don't care what happens in the privacy of your home, but don't make it a LIFESTYLE and shove it in our faces.
Curiously, homosexuality seems to correlate to interest in different types of sports.
For example, male homosexuals are not attracted to games where you hit a ball with a stick, such as golf and baseball. Female homosexuals, on the other hand, are strongly attracted to such games.
On the other hand there's ice skating, swimming, and diving...
If it wasn't for the porn issue, er swimsuit issue, SI would have been long gone by now, imho.
In football, its pretty much true.
If you came out as gay, either your first or second practise, someone is going to hurt you.
The only sport where you could be gay, and maybe get away with it, might be baseball, but in basketball, or hockey, your going to get hurt.
And you never want your own teamates to be the guys trying to injure you.
You know, they are still trying to figure out of that issue helps or hurts them.
There is some evidence (apparently, from them) that the issue might be hurting them.
SI makes its money because there isn't another big all around sporting magazine of the same quality. ESPN magazine is terrible, and the sporting news, which is very very good, doesn't have the raw name recognition.
SI makes its bread and butter by doing 2 or 3 big huge super stories every year, where they are all over the news, and that gets them subscribers and drives follow up sales on the newstand.
A retired NFL player already came out of the closet and wrote a book on his experience. Some Samoan guy, I think his name was Tualol or something.
Hypocrites, all of them...
Ping
Someone needs to post that photo of Piazza looking like a Gay porn star from the '70s.
I remember that. It was afterward, not while on the team. Big difference.
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