One of my sons good friends.
Play football together. His dad is a great guy and one of my best friends. Love the kid / family to bits and I can’t tell you how proud I am of him. Has an unbelievable future ahead of him. My wife and
I always knew.
My wife grew up dancing at Millingtons Dance school in Liverpool. I used to take her to all the competitions. Had a great time with openly gay people. Loved that time back in the 90’s
closet door bustdown This Texas athlete came out to his high school, then started a gay-straight alliance
By David Reddish March 20, 2021 10:03am
Meet , a 17-year-old varsity soccer player and member of the track team at Keller High in Keller, Texas. In a new essay with OutSports, He details his road to coming out, and why he chose to start a gay-straight alliance in his high school.
“Around the time I entered the fifth grade, I knew I was gay,” He writes. “I would never have admitted it to anyone, even myself, but I knew I was. Growing up in Keller, Texas, I became conditioned to the idea that anything different was considered wrong. So for the majority of my fifth- and sixth-grade years, I promised myself that I would find a way not to be different. I hoped that one day I would wake up and suddenly be normal.”
He goes on to explain how his fear living in the closet pushed him hard in athletics. He went on to become a record-breaking runner for his Jr. High cross country team. Yet even in the wake of his triumphs, he had regrets.
“I wish I could go back and win all of those races as a gay athlete,” he says. “I would prove it to all those kids who said words like “f*g” that they just got beat by a gay guy. That the gay guy shattered all of those records and made them look stupid, but I didn’t.”
“I wish that I wouldn’t have been too scared,” he adds.
He continued his athletics–and living in the closet–into high school his freshman year. Then, one fateful day, everything changed.
“It was around the end of the first semester of my freshman year, and my teammates and I had just finished practice,” he remembers. “We all sat in the locker room cracking jokes and messing with one another.”
Related: Country star TJ Osborne comes out in emotional new interview
“That was until the conversation shifted to my teammates making some not so funny jokes,” he writes. “They began to yell at one another, ‘Hey, don’t act like such a fag!’ and ‘Come on, you homo!’ The insults and language were nothing new to me, but then one of my teammates caught my response. They must have noticed me not laugh hard enough or my face wince because they shouted to me from halfway across the locker room, ‘What, are you gay?’ The locker room fell with a quiet laugh. I froze. I had never had someone ask me the question before. I was scared.”
“I looked him dead in the eye with shaking confidence in my voice said, ‘Yeah, I’m gay, is there a problem?'”
Ironically, it took a bit of convincing once He told his teammates. He had to swear that yes, he is gay. He also had to endure questions about who the hottest guys on the team were. Fortunately, those took a back seat to his explaining how he always knew he was gay, and how he wasn’t ashamed.
“In the weeks that followed, I began to notice a shift in my school’s sports culture,” Majure explains. “Although my coming out didn’t eliminate homophobia from my teammates and coaches, I saw less. The homophobic slurs and jokes in the locker room turned into teammates asking me genuine questions, and my coaches’ homophobic language was, for the most part, eliminated. I began to notice myself feel happier and freer as I proudly owned my identity as an athlete and a gay man on and off the field.”
By his junior year, He had delivered an address on LGBTQ equality in sports. He’d also started his school’s gay-straight alliance, for which he still serves as president.
“I am beyond thankful for my coming out,” he concludes. “It was the decision that genuinely changed my life and the lives of all of those around me. I used to feel like being gay was holding me down, but now I know that owning my sexuality is, in fact, what pushes me forward.”
Good game, kid.
