Yes, An Openly Gay Man will Soon Play in the NFL. Deal With It and Move On.

You've probably seen this video by now, but it still deserves a signal boost. It deserves all the signal boosts.

I don't think there's much more I can add to what Dale Hansen said in this video or about the fact that we will likely see an openly gay man play in the NFL. However, I will point out that the supposed "controversy" surrounding it reminds me why I kind of hate professional sports.

As Mr. Hansen pointed out, people are willing to forgive a lot when it comes to their precious star athletes. No matter what these players do, there are always people willing to get down on their knees and worship them for their godlike ability to run fast and throw a ball really far. Was an NFL player arrested for driving drunk? He's probably learned his lesson and will never do it again. Was he caught with a bunch of hookers and drugs in a hotel room? He's just having some fun and we should give him a break. Did he beat up his girlfriend? She probably did something to deserve it. Did a woman accuse him of rape? She's probably lying. As long as he could take his team to the Super Bowl, we're willing to sweep everything under the rug.

But wait! What if he happens to find other men attractive? Well, we can't have that, can we? That would be too much of a distraction and make all the jock-sniffing dudebros uncomfortable.

In a perfect world, nobody would care about Michael Sam's sexual orientation. Sadly, we don't live in that perfect world. It pains me to say this, but I think Sam's sexuality will be an issue for at least the first year or so of his NFL career simply because people will make it an issue. I can see the media making a big deal over it, and I can imagine that there will be plenty of homophobic football fans who won't be able to see past it. 

So, does this mean that I think Michael Sam should never have come out of the closet? Absolutely not. This is something that I think has to happen, if only to prove to the naysayers and bigots that simply having an openly gay player won't affect the game of football. There have always been GLBT people in literally all walks of life, and that includes professional sports. People need to accept that and move on, just as they need to accept the fact that a person's sexual orientation is a small part of who they are.

In some ways, I think the culture surrounding football is a little backwards. A lot of players, coaches and fans seem to hold onto the ideal of the "man's man," a concept that has become painfully outdated. A football player can be gay and be just as tough and just as talented as anybody else on the field. People are talking all about how Michael Sam is a gay man who plays football, but they need to see him as a football player who just happens to be gay. Or better yet, just a football player.

On Commercials, Coke and "Post-Racial" America

So there was a football game yesterday. If you didn't see it, don't worry. You didn't miss much. It was a dismal, one-sided blowout that actually became painful to watch after a while. As usual during this game, a lot of people were more interested in watching the commercials. Unfortunately, those weren't anything special either. There was one that did stand out from the crowd and got a lot of people talking. It was an ad for Coca-Cola that... well, you can take a look for yourself:

This is a pretty sweet commercial. It isn't exactly ground-breaking, but it is nice, uplifting and inoffensive.

That is, it's inoffensive as long as you're not an angry, white, conservative bigot with a Twitter account who thinks the official language of America - and therefore the world - should be English.

Shortly after this commercial was aired, #boycottcoke began trending on Twitter. To be fair, part of the reason for that was because people were trolling bigots, but there were still plenty of folks who posted stuff like this:



And this:



For those who are really upset by this alleged affront to hard-working Americans everywhere, #fuckcoke is also trending thanks to brilliant minds such as this one:



In case you were wondering, of course this outrage isn't just limited to Twitter. Former Florida Representative Allen West called the ad "disturbing" and said that America is "...on the road to perdition." Right-wing aggregator The Right Scoop also had this to say:

"...in a day and age where no political party is willing to fix our porous border, I can understand the outrage. America has a culture of its own, primarily denoted by our official language, English, and there are many in our society who would like to destroy that culture and are working hard at doing exactly that."

I wish I could say that I'm surprised that this is happening, but I can't. I saw this coming as soon as I started watching the commercial. People like to go on and on about how we live in a "post-racial" society and that people of color are now treated just as well as white people in our country, but there are still people who are convinced that being an American means being a WASP (that's White Anglo-Saxon Protestant for those who don't know) who only speaks English. Anybody who isn't white or who doesn't speak English as their first language apparently isn't a "real" American and is therefore inferior to the rest of us.

(Wow. I just realized that the last sentence I typed reads like something from a white supremacist manifesto. That's the first time I've ever actually scared myself while writing a blog post.)

I think it's time to set some things straight, because there are apparently just too many people out there who don't get it.

1. English is not the official language of the United States of America. The U.S. has no official language. You could argue that English has become the country's de facto official language, but it technically has no greater validity than any other language people choose to speak.

2. American culture clearly is not the melting pot we've all been led to believe. The only ones who seem to be unanimously accepted as American are white people from a traditional Christian background. Everyone else has been segregated, marginalized and ostracized in many ways since this country was founded. If we really were the melting pot that our teachers said we were, people wouldn't react so strongly to this commercial. People celebrating being American in different languages would be the status quo.

3. Europeans were not the first people in this country. There were hundreds of indigenous tribes that were here long before Spanish explorers, British colonists or any other white settlers showed up. That means all these dumbass white 'Murricans who want to "keep America American" have no more of a right to be here than "illegal" Mexicans and Muslim "terrorists."

4. "America the Beautiful" is not our national anthem. "The Star Spangled Banner" is.

It's stuff like this that makes me a little ashamed to call myself an American. I was born and raised here, and I haven't lived in any other country, yet there's a reason why I've decided to tell everybody I meet that I'm Canadian if I ever go overseas. I know that the people who took offense to this commercial don't represent everyone in this country, but there are enough of them making their voices heard to make it clear that we are not living in a "post-racial" society.

I'm sure there are people who will tell me that I'm un-American for saying these things, but to hell with them. If being an American means choosing to boycott a damn soft drink company for acknowledging a multi-cultural society, then I don't think I want to be an American.