Jason Collins: Sexuality and My Thoughts

Jason Collins came out last week amidst much news coverage which surprised the hell out of me because up until last week I had never heard of Jason Collins. A completely unremarkable athlete/basketball player whose only real achievement in the sport is being the first official gay basketball player. Good for him though, as much as I’m cynical about the timing of this announcement and the fact his contract is up at the end of season, I’m still proud that he did come out and declare himself as a gay man. That takes guts, courage and a whole lot of balls. He shouldn’t have to hide who he is because of social stigma and intolerance.

But I’m disappointed this was front page news.

The day of, every single news feed I had was blowing up with tweets and notifications about this. In a world of; 7 billion people, 196 countries and who knows how many ongoing global conflicts (No, really who knows? I have been trying to find an official list somewhere.), one man declaring his sexuality is front page news? Its incredible that our society hasn’t managed to get past the point where somebody being gay isn’t a big deal. Besides thinking who the hell is this, my first thought when I saw the report was who really gives a shit and why are you telling me this. I’m not trying to take anything away or diminish what Collins did and what the whole LGBT movement stands for. I want to reiterate that I support him fully (for what that’s worth) and respect him greatly because of it. But this shouldn’t be front page news, let alone news at all.

With all the advancements in our society we really have not gotten that much further than Middle Age thinking. Sexuality is still such a big deal in society because we refuse to let go of outdated modes of thinking. Now I’m also not trying to browbeat people into being more supportive of homosexuality (or the whole LGBT section of society now that I think about it). My views on it are a lot less altruistic than you may think.

I’m not supportive of or against alternative sexualities, you could say it something that I don’t really care about. It’s not something that particularly affects me, so I can’t get myself worked up about it one way or another. And before anybody calls me out on having opinions and writing about matter that don’t affect me, there are a number of issues where I can’t muster up any sort of strong opinions on. My thoughts on it can be summed up as; yeah sure, the LGBT community should be treated the same way as the straight community and be given the same level of rights and respect. Why not?

I pay as much attention to people being gay as I do to people who are straight, which is to say I don’t pay attention to you unless you’re of some importance to me. Does the sexuality of other people really matter to most people? I can’t understand why it would. I could name dozens of things more interesting about a person more interesting and relevant about a person than their sexuality. I have never really heard a solid reason why it should be a big deal or why alternative sexuality is such an affront to some people.

You can say it’s unnatural, but the fact that you can find the same behavior in the animal kingdom, would imply that in fact it is natural. Sure you can the whole religion route, and say its against those beliefs. I wouldn’t disagree with you there. However in perspective, there are also passages that state that being a stubborn and rebellious child is grounds for execution and that committing perjury is also worth the death penalty, which stopped being followed once people realized it’s pretty f*cking stupid. So its not like religion isn’t known for being slightly out of touch with reality. That however, is a completely different theological headache and I’m pretty sure I have reached my weekly quota for blasphemy. I should go to Mass.

Regardless, sexuality is not a big deal. There are dozens of professional sports in the world, and perhaps thousands of professional athletes in all these sports. One man coming out should never be breaking news. The world needs to accept that alternative sexuality is a big part of society and realize that this fight against it is one that they will not win and focus their energies elsewhere.

TL:DR. Stop cluttering up news feed with people coming out and actually tell me what important events are going on in the world.

And world, grow the f*ck up and find something else to be outraged at. I’m bored of this.