Jason Collins: Big Name Athletes Offer Support And Praise For First Openly Gay Male Athlete

This morning, journeyman NBA center and former Stanford All-American Jason Collins became the first current professional male athlete to come out of the closet. Because of prior comments from some athletes, there was a widespread fear that the first male athlete to be open about his sexuality would receive little to no support, but thus far, the reaction has mostly been the exact opposite.

Numerous high profile current and former athletes have taken to Twitter to enthusiastically endorse Collins’ newfound openness. In fact, compiling them all together would have required pages and pages, but as it stands, we’ve grabbed several of the louder and more famous voices below. All involve deserve a huge round of applause. There’s still a long way to go, but this is yet another big step forward. Everyone deserves a chance at happiness, and everyone deserves a fair shake, regardless of who they love.

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Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.