Dan Patrick and John Amaechi

Tomorrow, John Amaechi's book, Man in the Middle will come out. And in this book, so will John Amaechi. John has become the first player in the NBA to declare publicly that he is gay. This has not create that much of a stir, partly because hardly anyone knows who Amaechi is. He was not a star player like Magic Johnson.

What is more remarkable is that he is the first NBA player to have come out, when football players have come out many years ago (though not many). It's still a huge stigma for athletes to declare their homosexuality, that no active player in any of the major American team sports has ever come out.

This was the topic of Dan Patrick's radio show. And what did Dan Patrick do? He had a straw man, of sorts. He decided to compare John Amaechi's outing to Jackie Robinson. Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, when whites and blacks were segregated into separate leagues. To do this meant enduring "fans" who insulted him, wished him dead, and generally had no fear of hiding their hatred.

Jackie Robinson was picked because he was a calm man, instructed to not fight back, to not yell. He was also expected to succeed, so that it was shown a black man could compete in a white world.

Clearly, what he faced then was nowhere near what Amaechi faces today. Given the gay rights movement has been around nearly forty years or so, that players have come out in other sports, that gay marriages were performed, it seems almost quaint how backwards sports has become.

But rather than discuss those issues, Dan Patrick decided to compare Amaechi's situation to Robinson, and thus, talk mostly about Robinson, his favorite athlete. Look Dan Patrick, Amaechi had no illusions that what he did made him this generations Jackie Robinson, so why are you bringing it up?

One thing Jackie Robinson could say, as a man who was visibly African American, was that he could marry an African American and raise a family. They might be harassed, which is hardly a picnic, but they would have each other. And baseball had some luxuries. Although it's a team sport, it's about as individual as a team sport gets. And there's no real physical contact.

In particular, this means that he might not get it from other players, who might either physically attack him, or let him vulnerable to injury in a sport. This could happen, for example, in football, where there is a modest amount of decorum preventing players from getting seriously hurt (and they already get hurt as it is). Maybe someone wants to exercise a harder foul than usual. Who knows?

Unlike being black, people can hide being gay, which is a double edge sword. On the one hand, you can avoid other players's scrutiny by pretending to fit in. On the other, you live a lie. At least Jackie Robinson could say that he could live life a certain way, and didn't have to hide. Ultimately, it's this ability to hide that makes it more insidious because it makes people want to lie, and this is something most people are raised not to do. Jackie may have also been able to depend on support from his teammates (I don't know his history, so I can't say for sure).

Amaechi may indeed suffer more discrimination from the players themselves than from fans who may be far more willing to embrace him. It took other players like Martina Navratilova to put a face on gay/lesbian athletes. Once upon a time, Martina could not win an endorsement. Not only did she not have Chris Evert's girl-next-door look, she was also a lesbian!

Indeed, Dan Patrick should have used the segment to raise the issue of Rene Portland, women's coach for Penn State, who has a "no lesbian" policy. Despite protests and warnings, Portland continues to discriminate against lesbian athletes. Use the opportunity of Amaechi's announcement to talk about Rene Portland and what fans think of this.

Instead, Patrick took the safe way out. He talked about Jackie Robinson, and let fans who cared about civil rights crow away, rather than to deal with the issue of gay discrimination now. Perhaps Patrick finds the topic difficult to discuss. Maybe he feels that people should not make a big deal, so he points out that Robinson had it worse.

There was a theory that other nearby places (Jamaica and the like) ended slavery sooner because the slaveowners were less considerate than American slaveowners. Yet, few people would claim that slavery in the US was any less insidious. So what if Amaechi doesn't feel the outward hatred of the public. The fact of the matter is he waited until he retired to come out. You'd think, in a day and age like this, someone would come out as a pro athlete, and yet, they haven't.

The fact is, civil rights may have given more freedoms and privileges to African Americans, but they haven't been terribly willing to embrace gay and lesbian rights, partly because of the influence of the church, and partly because of a greater sense of homophobia. If African Americans were really ready to embrace civil rights, in all forms, the NBA would have been the first to have a gay player come out.

This would have lead to a far more provocative discussion, that African Americans, once the source of discrimination, would be dishing it out subliminally (to be fair, along with whites, and others) to other groups, when they, most of all, should set an example.

If the NBA really wants to take advantage of this situation, they should start putting up ads supporting John Amaechi about gay players in basketball, and perhaps create a slogan of "That's not my NBA" (commercial would have film from the early days of basketball where people didn't want blacks and a modern player say "That's not my NBA" and then flash forward to not wanting gay players and again "That's not my NBA".

But you know, this is all about business, all about not offending the fan base who may have prejudices, the kinds that Rene Portland actively has, and perhaps other coaches and players privately has.

So Dan Patrick, you had your chance to talk about this topic in a meaningful way, and chose a cheap way out, so you didn't have to deal with it.