Don't discount public's role in why gays stay in closet

	John Amaechi is the first current or former NBA player to come out as gay. AP

Periodically now, a former professional player nobody ever heard of when he was playing comes out with a book revealing that he is gay. The latest is John Amaechi, late of the NBA. Each account invariably details the difficulty the player had in keeping his secret amidst such a macho culture. Then, following that is the inevitable response, which is to show compassion for what the gay athlete endured while castigating his league for being so homophobic a culture.

Now, please understand, I could not be more sympathetic to gay players like Amaechi. I can only imagine how painfully difficult it must be to live and play in such a competitive environment, while having, every day, to pretend to be something that you are not. I would also acknowledge that any group of young men -- yes, especially those in athletics where the testosterone is boiling -- will be generally rude and insensitive. It's not nice, but it has surely come with the territory ever since young men foregathered to go out hunting for wild woolly mammoths.

I can quite understand how poor Amaechi had to steel himself not to cringe most every day in the locker room listening to random gay-bashing, hearing every mean epithet ever employed for homosexuals. But, hey, a lot of that is braggadocio and posturing, and a lot of it comes from a relatively small percentage of any team. When, to use an analogy, women reporters first were allowed in the locker room a generation ago, most of the players accommodated themselves. It was only a handful on any team that found gross and sophomoric ways to behave.

Yes, there are jerks on every team -- and a few outright homophobes -- but my experience and instinct lead me to believe that if a professional male athlete did dare come out, most of his teammates would accept it, and the predominant peer pressure would force the numbskulls to go along. Evidence? OK, I know personally well two absolutely outstanding athletes who starred for many years -- one in a team sport, one in an individual sport. No, neither ever came out. But, yes, everybody knew they were gay. But they were good guys -- and the one team player was a fabulous teammate. After awhile, it just wasn't an issue.

So I believe that the reason gay male athletes stay in the closet has far more to do with the public than with the locker room. Especially in our society today where you find so much incivility in the grandstand, what player would dare risk giving the beered-up Neanderthal creeps a chance to scream vile personal insults every time he missed a basket or struck out?

Isn't it revealing that not a single American leading-man actor has ever admitted his homosexuality when he was still a star? And yet we all know that the theater is institutionally welcoming to gays. Obviously, it is fear of the audience, not of their colleagues, that keeps gay actors playing straight.

Male athletes can be boors and bullies. You bet. Teams and leagues themselves can be hidebound. Good grief, recently the Toronto Maple Leafs merely sanctioned the use of their logo and game action in a new movie about a former player who is gay, and simply for that gesture the reaction has all but been to put the Maple Leafs up for the Nobel Peace Prize. So yes, granted, professional sports is not the most forgiving environment.

But to hear, every time a former athlete comes out, that players are especially prejudiced, is simply a canard. The villains are much more the ones cheering -- and booing -- than the ones playing. The bad guys are us.