Years after coming out, gay athletes upset by lack of change

BRISBANE, Australia — David Kopay and Ian Roberts live on different sides of the Pacific Ocean. Both took giant leaps of faith when they came out.

And at a time when it had never been done in their sports.

Kopay is a 78-year-old former National Football League running back living in Palm Springs, California, and is known as the first professional athlete to reveal he was gay. He came out in 1975 after his NFL career ended.

In 1995, Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first professional rugby player in the world to come out as gay.

Some 45 years after Kopay’s open disclosure, and 25 after Roberts’, both men are united in their disappointment that a higher proportion of gay athletes haven’t come out, and that homophobic language on the sporting fields is still rife.

“It’s ignorance more than anything else, they try to hide their own insecurities by putting down other people,” Kopay told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, speaking about homophobic slurs. The call interrupted his rearranging in a new apartment photos and other memorabilia from an eight-year NFL career that spanned five teams, beginning with the San Francisco 49ers in 1964.

“It’s horrible to hear that kids are being targeted. I’ve sacrificed so much to try and change this problem,” Kopay added. “I know most people don’t mean anything when they use these horrible words, but . . . you have no idea what people are thinking.”

Roberts, who has forged an acting career since retiring, played for two more rugby league seasons after coming out. A powerful front-row forward who played for the national team, Roberts wishes he had done it sooner.

“It was the worst-kept secret. Everyone knew I was gay. I wish I had come out from Day One,” the 55-year-old Roberts told the AP in a telephone interview from a movie set near Sydney where he’s working in the third season of the “Mr. Inbetween” series. “Personally, it was kind of empowering when you come out, there were some wonderful stories as well; people came to me and said how happy they were with me.”

Kopay’s comments about homophobic language and Roberts’ about coming out are at the forefront of two studies published Wednesday by Melbourne’s Monash University.

The first analyzed survey responses from 1,173 lesbian, gay and bisexual people aged 15 to 21 and living in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Ireland. Authors described it as the first study to investigate whether LGB youth who “come out” to teammates are more likely to be a target of homophobic behavior than those who do not.

“Some gay athletes who have come out as adults have said fears that LGB young people will be the target of homophobic behaviors if they come out to their teammates are unfounded,” said lead author Erik Denison from Monash’s Behavioural Sciences Research Laboratory. “We hoped this was true given young people generally have positive attitudes toward gay people.

“Being the target of homophobic behavior is harmful to the health of LGB young people and increases their risk of depression, suicide, and selfharm.”

The study also showed that young people who came out were significantly more likely to report they’d been the target of homophobic behaviors in sport settings.

The second Monash study investigated why some athletes use homophobic language.