Big surprise, I don’t follow sports; well some sports. I do surprise Carlos with my sports trivia knowledge when we watch Jeopardy. I answer a question right—or is it Question an answer right?—and I get a look from him like he doesn’t know me. But I digress …
I don’t follow sports, especially professional skateboarding, but apparently one of its biggest draws, Brian Anderson, has just come out as gay. Anderson, who won the Skater of the Year award and a World Cup of Skateboarding title back in 1999, and founded 3D Skateboarders, is now forty and says he is now being asked why he waited until now, and not come out earlier where he might have been an inspiration to others; Anderson replied:
“Hearing ‘faggot’ all the time, it made me think at a young age, it was really dangerous to talk about it. I figured it out how to balance it to where nobody questioned it and I was a big tough skateboarder, of course they’re not going to question that. Nobody thought anything. … I was really scared,” he said. “People would have perceived it differently if I’d said it 15 years ago.”
Anderson says his family and friends knew he was gay, but he never publicly talked about it until now:
“I think of how I felt when I was younger, totally scared. A lot of these kids who don’t have hope are really scared to death. To hear what I went through, and that everything got better for me, and I got a lot happier and felt more free and didn’t have all this shame buried in my body, you become a happier person. So to convey that message is really important to me. I consider myself a skateboarder first, gay second. I’m a skater, that’s all I know.”
And now an inspiration to others, and the recipient of The Gay Agenda and The Coming Out Toaster Oven from HOMO HQ.
Welcome out, Brian; however you do it, and whenever you do it, just do it.
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