"2011 was an ideal year for a pioneering gay athlete to emerge. So where were they?"

Commentary from Howard Bryant in ESPN The Magazine (h/t Steve Buckley):

AS 2011 GIVES WAY TO 2012, "don't ask, don't tell" has disappeared from the military, gay adoption is commonplace, Houston and Portland have gay mayors, and same-sex marriage is legal in half a dozen states and counting. Meanwhile, numerous athletes and coaches have told me they couldn't care less if a teammate were to come out, suggesting now is the time for openly gay players in mainstream team sports.

So why are we still waiting? It's been more than a decade since former No. 1 tennis player Amelie Mauresmo said she was gay, six years since WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes did the same. More recently, Portland State basketball coach Sherri Murrell, NBA team executive Rick Welts, Oregon State softball coach Kirk Walker and Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley all disclosed their homosexuality while still active, to generally positive reaction. Yet no openness movement has followed. No active male athlete in any of the major leagues has followed the path of Mauresmo and Swoopes. It's a reminder that quite some time has passed since sports stood progressively ahead of the rest of the country, when Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey and Happy Chandler integrated baseball in 1947 -- before the military, hundreds of school districts and thousands of churches.

But as it did 65 years ago, sports can lead again by welcoming -- encouraging, in fact -- the arrival of male gay athletes into the mainstream, by fortifying individual courage with comprehensive support. The NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB have added sexual orientation protections to their CBAs. Unfortunately, David Stern, Gary Bettman, Roger Goodell and Bud Selig have yet to back that up by forcefully advocating for openly gay players in their sports, and that's a huge reason it hasn't happened.

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