Olympic closets: larger or smaller?

There has been some buzz about the gay Olympians. Since there are over 10,000 athletes some speculate there must be 1,000 or so gay folks.

I may agree, overall, 10% of the population had or has same sex thoughts or desires. But that doesn’t mean it is 10% across the board.

We all know some careers seem to be more attractive and have a higher percentage of GLBTQ folks. So, adversely, we must conclude there are careers having a lesser percentage.

I suggest athletes fall into this category.

But the point of the topic still remains even if only 1% of the Olympic athletes are GLBTQ. Because this would mean, roughly, 90 closet cases exist and 10 or so are out and proud.

Never in the Closet

by Albert Mohler

The pace of moral change is now accelerated to the point that it is clearly visible and undeniable.

Evidence for this is found in a recent article published in The Boston Globe Magazine. Entitled, "Easy Out," the article makes the case that today's gay teenagers in Massachusetts find leaving the "closet" very easy -- because they never thought themselves to be closeted as homosexual in the first place.

One day Peck heard several female friends giggling over an attractive older
boy, and the next thing he knew, he had joined the conversation. "The girls were
talking about how cute he was. I said something like 'Yeah, he is so cute,'"
Peck remembers. "It just kind of came out, and I was really startled by it." But
his friends were neither startled nor uncomfortable. "They didn't miss a beat,"
says Peck, now 19 and a freshman at New York University. "They totally accepted
me."

Emboldened by his friends' casual reaction, Peck, a slim young man with
curly brown hair, told his parents that he was gay. He was only 15. Their
response was equally positive and accepting. His mother, Nancy Peck, who lives
in Concord, says her only concern was making sure that Russell was "safe, happy,
and healthy." Her son shared his news with friends at Concord-Carlisle that
fall, joined Spectrum - a school-based discussion club about gay and lesbian
issues - and continued, he says, to feel "very comfortable" during his remaining
three years of high school.

full story

Why is the GOP so popular with closet cases?

As one embarrassing episode follows another, with almost predictable regularity, perhaps it is time for Republicans and conservatives to ask themselves an obvious question: What makes the Republican Party -- and the conservative movement more generally -- so attractive to closeted homosexual men?

Does the party draw closeted men because they can hide behind Republican homophobia? Or does the party promote homophobia as a political ruse while closeted men run the show? Whatever the answer, the result is routine humiliation and personal destruction. Even worse, the party's culture of concealment encourages right-wing gay-bashing, such as Tucker Carlson's grotesque boast that he and another adolescent thug beat up a gay man who "bothered" him in a bathroom years ago.

Telling such manly tales may relieve the insecurities of Republicans who must contemplate the ever-mounting archive of homosexual history in their party's ample closet. But only Republicans who are truly in denial can ignore the long parade now led by the reluctant Craig -- a conga line of right-leaning queens that dates all the way back to the late Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's infamous henchman and an intimate friend of the Reagans'. Perhaps, like Cohn, today's closeted Republicans believe that they aren't really gay at all, except for a few minutes in bed (or in the men's room).

So long as Republicans promote homophobia, the party's closets will be crowded.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/08/31/gay_republicans/