Sean Avery isn't exactly someone you'd expect to utter a politically correct, enlightened statement on gay marriage. He's stuck his skate boot in his mouth more than a few times in the past, and once was suspended six games for saying something truly nasty about a former girlfriend.
But you know what? When somebody does the right thing, he deserves a pat on the back of the jersey. And even though the Garden didn't back him up with a supportive statement, leaving Avery out there on his own, the fact that a hockey brawler would appear on a video in support of gay nuptials is a breakthrough of sorts.
"It shows you can't judge a book by its cover," said Cyd Ziegler, president of Outsports.com, a Los Angeles-based website covering gay-related issues in sports. "And he's showing that sports have changed. The anti-gay culture is something young athletes have inherited but don't really want. It's mostly coaches and agents who have the problems."
One such hockey agent, Todd Reynolds of Uptown Sports Management, already made an unfortunate spectacle of himself, criticizing Avery's appearance on Twitter as "very sad" and "misguided."
Reynolds can Tweet all he wants. The tide of events and opinion are no longer on his side.
[...]
Yet the world of sports remains a constant battleground for gay rights, and a very public stage for gay insults. The three-letter F-word is thrown around everywhere, even after some athletes have learned to stop employing racially charged slurs.
"It's the last great holdout," said Howard Bragman, a public-relations guru for gays who has helped homosexual athletes and celebrities go public. "The only places gays can't serve openly are in the Kuwaiti army and the NFL. You can hit your girlfriend, murder somebody, get a DUI, get involved with dogfighting, but you can't be gay."
[...]
That is what makes Avery's stance so admirable, almost radical. He didn't merely tape a safe, public-service ad against bullying or gay-bashing. As important as those spots are, they are for the large part preaching to the choir.
Avery went a step further to endorse a political position that likely is not accepted by a significant minority of his rooters in the hockey seats at the Garden. And that ought to be the point, really. The message is now out there to a new audience, from a messenger who slams Penguins and Capitals into the boards.
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