Gay German Footballers: We're Here, We're Queer, We Can't Tell You Who We Are.

Yesterday's big gay news in the sports world -- two soccer stars gave in-depth interviews to a German language magazine about their experiences as closeted professional soccer players. According to a summary of the piece by UK's PinkNews, one of the anonymous gay soccer stars is single but has a female friend to accompany him to social events and act as his beard. The other is married but is carrying on a secret relationship with another man he's known since childhood. "Both said that coming out would be professional suicide." Well, duh.

"RUND magazine spent two years gaining the trust of the players and researching homophobia in the beautiful game."

Two years? Just to find evidence of rampant homophobia in German soccer? Seems like a mighty long time to research, reach an obvious conclusion, and publish anonymous interviews that can't be verified. (Speaking as a freelance writer that seems like a cakewalk to me!) Anyway, though the original German article itself has me skeptical, I did learn something interesting from the PinkNews article that summarized it, which is: The UK has laws on the books against homophobic chanting at public sporting events. That strikes me as remarkably progressive but also quite sad that something like that would be needed. I wouldn't exactly describe US sports arenas as "gay-friendly" but I don't think I've ever been witness to mobs of fans chanting gay slurs in unison at competing team players. Maybe I don't go to enough sporting events, but I have trouble even imagining it. In contrast, en masse footballer fan homophobia was becoming a common occurence in the UK, leading to the law. I hardly think US sports fans, taken as a group, can be more enlightened then their English counterparts when it comes to anti-gay epithet. So why doesn't something like that happen here? Are American sports fans simply more civil? Or are the Brits just better at organizing group activities?