Salon.com > lgbt sports

Why Jason Collins isn’t a Jackie Robinson figure — and that’s a good thing

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:13:00 +0000

In the 25 or so hours since NBA center Jason Collins came out on the cover of Sports Illustrated, he's been praised by everyone from Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant to Presidents Bill Clinton (turns out Collins and Chelsea Clinton attended Stanford concurrently) and Barack Obama.

And yet there's an audience Collins may have to work to win over -- gay writers, who have been taking him to task since he came out.

Bloomberg View's Josh Barro, for instance, implies that Collins, who is in the twilight of his career at 34, has been dragging his feet and shirking "an obligation to lead" for years:

NBA player Jason Collins comes out, Twitter reacts

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:36:00 +0000

NBA free agent Jason Collins is the first active male athlete to come out as gay in the history of professional sports. Many on Twitter viewed this very big news as, appropriately enough, very big news.

A sampling of the cheers for Collins and questions about what's next for gay athletes in professional sports:

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Jason Collins becomes first openly gay male professional athlete

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:45:00 +0000

Jason Collins, NBA center and league free agent, came out as gay on the cover of the May 6 issue of Sports Illustrated. He is the first active male professional athlete to do so, making this pretty big news.

In the piece, which begins "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay," Collins goes on to explain that he used downtime during the 2011 player lockout to "confront who I really am and what I really want." He reflected on his family, his teammates and what role he could play in advancing equality for others before finally making the decision to come out, he writes: