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I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.
I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.
My journey of self-discovery and self-acknowledgement began in my hometown of Los Angeles and has taken me through two state high school championships, the NCAA Final Four and the Elite Eight, and nine playoffs in 12 NBA seasons.
I’ve played for six pro teams and have appeared in two NBA Finals. Ever heard of a parlor game called Three Degrees of Jason Collins? If you’re in the league, and I haven’t been your teammate, I surely have been one of your teammates’ teammates. Or one of your teammates’ teammates’ teammates.
source: Sports Illustrated
If they had been the ones who made the choice, the gay community could not have picked a better man to be the first openly gay athlete in American big league sports. Seriously, how eloquent is this guy? Please do click the link and keep reading. It’s a great read. For all Jason Collins gifts as an athlete, the man is equally gifted with words.
Depending on where you mark the beginnings, Major League Baseball has been around for about 140 years, the NFL is seven years shy of 100, and the NBA will turn 67 in June. Through those three leagues and hundreds of years combined, no active player has come out until now. That is how hard the unwritten code of the locker room was cast. They may as well just have had a sign over the door of the locker room of every sports team in America that read, “NO GAYS ALLOWED.”
Jason Collins just showed a lot of courage to come out the way he did today. We’re not talking courage on the level of Jackie Robinson, Collins won’t face a level of hate anything near what Robinson faced in being the first black man to play in the major leagues, but as far as heroes and heroines go, in one day, I would say the man is already of a larger magnitude than say, Ellen DeGeneres, who came out in a comedian / entertainment community which already had it’s fair share of openly gay performers. This is not to take away anything from Ellen (whose act is surprisingly about as clean as Bob Sagat spinning jokes on America’s Funniest Home Videos) but beloved as Ellen may be by the gay community and supporters of gay rights, what Jason Collins did today was a giant leap forward compared to Ellen’s step out of the closet.
Myself personally? I’m so straight, I once french kissed a guy on a bet and felt even more straight after that kiss because I felt nothing whatsoever in it. I only have eyes for women and nothing but women. I also have a lot of Christian friends who I respect who truly believe that homosexuality is a sin. I will continue respecting them as long as they also live up to Jesus’ teaching to “hate the sin, love the sinner”.
That is their belief, they think homosexuality is a choice and a sinful one at that, and I will respect my Christian friends who believe this even though I have seen with my own eyes plenty examples of people who I believe were born gay. Sure, some people might make the choice as a conscious decision, a choice that they would rather live the alternative lifestyle, but who among us hasn’t also known a two- or three- or four-year-old kid that you already knew was gay many years before they might figure it out themselves?
There are conservatives and there are libertarians. I am much more the latter than the former, but for my conservative friends who believe in “traditional marriage”, I ask you to try to imagine being born different as I give some major props to Jason Collins, because today, he became the first major leaguer to have the courage to come out and say, this is me, and I am who I am.
So a few people on the Internet couldn’t help but notice that after 16 years of existence, Google chose today as the day they would honor Cesar Chavez’ birthday . . .
Today also happens to be Easter Sunday, the day that marks the Resurrection of Christ for the Christian faithful around the world, but hey, I don’t know why people are freaking out over Google’s choice of a leftist labor leader over the chosen Savior of two billion people. After all, Google has chosen to ignore Easter for thirteen straight years now. The last time Google recognized Easter was in their third year of existence back in 2000.
So I’m trying to figure out my reply to Google’s ongoing snub of the two billion faithful and I’m remembering how I was told that if you want to be a Christian, you should strive to be Christ-like in everything you do. Whenever you come to a decision point, you should ask yourself, WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? In this case, I asked myself, how would Jesus respond?
Unfortunately, I can’t really imagine what an Internet Jesus would tweet about this, so I decided to do the next best thing and take a positive course of action.
There, fixed it for you, Google!
I’m also fixing the default search engine on all the browsers in the house as well.
Happy Easter, all.
Shaving and waxing of bikini lines could be behind an explosion in the number of cases of a type of sexually transmitted infection that causes unsightly warts, doctors are warning. Shaving the pubic region causes ‘micro-trauma’ of the skin, boosting the chance of a pox virus called Molluscum contagiosum, say the French experts. The virus causes water warts, small pink bubbles which can break out over the body. These warts are relatively common in children as the virus can be spread by normal skin-on-skin contact. However, it is also passed on during sexual activity, and over the last decade the incidence of this type of infection has been on the rise.
source: The Telegraph
I love the fact that the doctors even got into psychoanalyzing the factors behind this recent widespread fancy for excessive shaving:
They said the reason for opting for pubic hair removal remained “unclear”, “but may be linked with internet-based pornography”. “Another reason cited is an increased sexual sensation. There may also be psychological reasons, as an unconscious desire to simulate an infantile look or a desire to distance ourselves from our animal nature.”
Hey ladies, it’s yours and yours alone to do what you want with it, but consider me President of the Bush Loving Men of the World and allow me to be one voice calling proudly for a return to the au naturel!
Give up that infantile look, rediscover and celebrate your animal nature!
The excessive shaving I will never understand, but reality is, if you’ve got a rockin’ bod and you want to show it off (and you don’t happen to be Japanese, ever notice how most Japanese girls have a natural bikini trim?) if you want to rock that bikini, you will have to do some bikini area shaving.
In the public interest then, I share this article, which is probably common sense to most ladies, but it may inform or remind you of some of the things you can do to avoid the bumps:
Can you imagine the meeting where Joe Nocera either proposed it or was given the task of blogging a list of the worst gun violence he could dredge up across America on a daily basis? However it went down, they have a new feature at the NY Times website which selectively lists all the horrible uses of guns on a daily basis . . . to which I had to respond:
All the criminals and robbers and rapists and ganstas in America applaud your efforts to disarm America’s law-abiding citizens. – Mike Cornelison, The OC
and a thoughtful reply came back:
Mike,
Oh come on. No one is trying to disarm America’s law abiding citizens. You’ve been drinking tea from Wayne LaPierre’s teat if you believe that.
What people are trying to do is to find a way to make our society a safer place. One big thing would be to take unlicensed, unregistered guns from people who should not have them. Doing this would place a small responsibility on responsible gun owners to register their guns on a regular basis, like they do motor vehicles. This is not a violation of your rights, so don’t whine about violating the Second Amendment.
Take personal responsibility for yourself. If you want to own guns, show that you are capable of being a good citizen. Distinguish yourself from the criminals and robbers and rapists and gangstas and rednecks and hoarders and extremists and contribute to the society that provides you with the right to own a gun. – Them or Us, New York
to which I replied:
Uh yeah, you want every law-abiding gun owner in America in a national database, right? Don’t think it can’t happen here. I’m sure the Germans thought they were just voting for CHANGE in the 1930s. You’re comfortable with Obama’s Justice Department saying King, er – President Obama can act as judge, jury and executioner in using drone strikes on American citizens? I bet you howled in protest against the PATRIOT Act under Bush, only to be silent in reply to the expansion of the government’s powers to examine every email sent and received in America. Don’t think it can’t happen here, that we should all be good little lambs and put all our faith in the government to protect us when we’re just a couple more slips down a slippery slope until someone determines that all those doors of the gun owners in the national database need a visit.
The Clinton Justice Department identified 1.5 million cases per year of guns used for self defense. Let that sink in for a bit and then consider this – the Second Amendment came just after the first not for self-defense against criminals and robbers and rapists, but to ensure that the government would fear the people and not the other way around. – Mike Cornelison, The OC
The New York Times calls its new propaganda campaign, “The Day in Gun Violence in America”.
Notice the fact that not a single incident from Chicago is mentioned. Chicago, where the strictest gun control laws in America have been imposed on its law-abiding citizens and where more people are dying in Chicago’s streets than our soldiers in Afghanistan.