“We will second-guess ourselves forever,” his father said. “But we do know that for years and years, people knocked him down for being different. It damaged him. It wore on him. He could never fully believe how wonderful he was, and how many people loved him.”

The occasional athlete has seen this and taken a step forward to help bridge understanding. David Testo, the former Major League Soccer player who came out last year, did so in part because he didn’t want to see these stories anymore. Good for him, and we need more like him.

Yet dozens, if not hundreds, of professional athletes in the United States remain quiet. Their coming out can help bridge gaps of understanding in a way so many other voices cannot. Yet they put their endorsement deals and big paydays ahead of helping to save kids life. Shame on them.

I honestly believe that they are putting their own payday ahead of the lives of these kids. May sound harsh, but that’s become my line of thinking given there is no good reason for any professional athlete who has been paid to play his sport for five or more years to stay in the closet today. None.

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My life has been told in a nutshell numerous times through various articles. But I never actually sat down and told my life in its entirety. Growing up in small town America is not an easy task. We’re always the last to get the new inventions like the internet, HDTV, and all of the other things.

Growing up in small town America we had backyard football, wiffle ball and baseball. I can’t recall a day we spent inside. When those sports got old, we re-invented new ones like backyard basketball where tackling was allowed, and BB gun wars. Granted, as I think back, BB gun wars was not a bright idea.

I remember it plain as day back in firth grade when he moved into my class. A new boy from Norristown PA, which is right outside of Philly. Mike and I hit it off right off the bat. Come to find out his future step mom and my mom worked together, so our families ended up becoming best of friends as well. Mike and I grew up as close as brothers can be. Where one was, the other was. We hunted, fished, played football and wrestled together.

I will never ever forget when we were both 13, up in his room playing bases loaded on SNEs when our cocky talk turned sexual. We both lost our virginity that day. Mike and I continued our love/brother relationship for over two years until he decided he was going to started doing the straight lifestyle and end all sexual relations between us. Naturally, once that was gone the brother relationship we once had started falling apart. The only time I ever slept with a girl was when Mike’s cousin came over, and I thought/felt like I had something to prove to Mike. That night I slept with a girl for the first and only time.  I knew then I was in deep trouble with my life.

When I got the Internet at the age of 17, I thought, OK this is going to give me access to what I have been seeking for a long time. Instead it backfired for me. What I was seeing was gay couples being happy and being able to be who they are. It had a total reverse effect on me, on what I hoped would open my mind. I knew in my mind I could not be what I saw in the images. Not where I was in life. Depression kept building and building until I could no longer take it. It’s kind of odd, that even after 14 years I can remember the night before, and the night of my suicide attempt, like it happened yesterday.

The night before, the wrestling team, which I quit the beginning of the year, named me honorary captain when we faced our rivals, the Canton Warriors. The following night I was swallowing pill after pill no longer wanting to live the lie that I had built. As I took the pills, one thing that entered my mind was not being able to see the Giants win another Super Bowl. Kind of odd how us jocks think. All I knew is the white picket fence fairytale dream wasn’t for me, and I had to end it.

Unfortunately that night I told some one in California what I was doing and he called 911. Those who know my story already know what happened that night.

Being shipped to a teen psych ward is some thing no one wants to have happen to them. I had one thing working for me though: The other teens woke up that morning to know that a new kid arrived during the night.

I was in survival mode. I had played the part as the perfect jock for way to many years. I could fool these guys as well, I thought. And I did. Donning my letterman jacket, I started flirting with every girl in there. I was not ready to face my biggest fear. But I failed at my attempt to hide whom I was, so it was time to make the best out of it. Most of the staff that worked nights were Penn State college girls. They often flirted with me, and I flirted back. In my mind I was going to make it through this and everything would be fine. Little did I know…

I remember speaking to Mike that first night I got home from the psych ward. He was hesitant to tell me: Kyle had told the whole school about me being gay. Mike also told me that no one cared. He was worried about me: Mike wanted the best for his brother, but he knew my fate was sealed.

You can find Greg Congdon on Facebook.

Part 2 of his story will be published on Outsports next week.

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Let me introduce you to 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer. He killed himself last weekend after years of being bullied by kids about his sexual orientation. He had previously recorded an ‘It Gets Better’ video (posted after the jump). He came out as bisexual to his friends, but the bullying was too much to take. As I’m sure you know, he’s just the latest young person to kill himself because of anti-gay bullying.

I’m getting really frustrated with our closeted professional athletes. This kid in Buffalo, N.Y., came out even though he was teased constantly. Yet masculine, larger-than-life millionaires with millions of fans still can’t bring themselves to do it. I started calling them cowards a few months ago, and that word seems more appropriate every day. How else can you describe someone who has his $400,000 game check deposited to his bank account 16 times a year while reading headlines of another gay kid killing himself?

I can’t remember what blog I was reading last week, but the writer said the first active pro American athlete coming out would be a watershed moment in our history. He said it would change things. And it would. With the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell today, sports is truly the last closet. An athlete coming out would have such a deeper impact on our culture than the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It wouldn’t suddenly stop all the anti-gay bullying overnight, but it would quiet some. Even if it quieted one, that’s a big step in someone’s life. Instead, these athletes staying in the closet reinforce the notion that gay is bad; If it weren’t bad, they would come out publicly.

One defense I hear is that “no one asks them if they’re gay.” We’ve heard from the occasional athlete who came out after retirement that “they wouldn’t lie about it if asked.” No. Sorry. That doesn’t fly. People who have social responsibility don’t wait until someone else asks them to act. They act. They see an injustice and they ask. Dan Choi didn’t wait around until HRC came knocking on his door: He saw people suffering and he took matters into his own hands.

It’s just like football and basketball players who take victory on the field and court into their own hands; They don’t wait until someone asks them if they’d like to catch a game-winning touchdown, they demand the ball. It’s how their brains work. They know how to do it. They know how to make change.

Instead, they all sit in their penthouses, watching their 60-inch hi-def TVs with their boyfriends, as news of kids like Jamey scrolls by them. “I can’t come out,” they tell themselves. “I might lose a jersey sale. I might not get that next Gatorade endorsement deal. Sure, I’ve got $5 million in the bank, but it’s not enough. Risking another million isn’t worth potentially saving a kid’s life.”

While it might sound harsh, that is in fact the decision they are consciously making every day.

We have a policy at Outsports to not out anyone. I can’t see a time when we would go against that policy, but I’ve been thinking about it more and more. At some point, does the coming-out of these millionaires whose salaries we pay become more than just a “personal decision”? At some point, is it the responsibility of the many to put the bullying and suicides of 14-year-olds ahead of a public millionaire’s desire to stay in the closet? I keep answering “No” to these questions, but more and more I find myself wanting to say “Yes.”

Hat tip to Towleroad.

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Football, 1985. Former Pitt Panther standout Ed Gallagher lied down atop the Kensico Dam, asked God for forgiveness, and rolled into the open space 100 feet above the ground. Gallagher had recently given into his gay sexual desires for the first time and the guilt was too much to take. But on that day he became the first person to ever survive a suicide attempt at the Kensico Dam. He saw it as a second chance at life, and he made every moment count.

He was now paralyzed from the waist down with limited use of his arms. He would be wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life until he died 20 years later. In that time he became a fierce advocate for disabled rights, creating the organization Alive To Thrive. His efforts resulted in access to dozens of businesses and facilities and a deeper understanding of people with paralysis through his public access TV show, Mister Ed’s Corral.

Gallagher was also a fierce advocate for gay acceptance. He knew well the effects that overt and latent homophobia had on gay people, and he focused his efforts on helping kids accept themselves for who they are. Long before ‘It Gets Better,’ Gallagher was saying just that.

For much of the late ’80s and throughout the 1990s, Gallagher was a go-to guy for media appearances. His story was unique, and he could speak to the issues that so many different people faced in their lives. He appeared on The Howard Stern Show, HBO, and in the New York Times thanks to an article by Robert Lipsyte, who talks about Ed at length in his new book, An Accidental Sportswriter. He also spoke to dozens of schools, Fortune 500 companies and law-enforcement agencies including the FBI.

Few people dedicated their lives to improving understanding of gay people more than Gallagher. And I miss him.

For more information:

• Outsports’ original article on Gallagher from 2001
• Visit Alivetothrive.org via the Wayback Machine
• Outsports’ obituary for Gallagher
• Gallagher’s novel about a gay teenage athlete, Johnny In The Spot
• Bob Lipsyte’s An Accidental Sportswriter

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“I was very sad to hear about Chris’ death,” TNA Wrestling publicist Ross Forman said yesterday. “I worked with Chris for years at WCW and, more than that, Chris was a friend. He was a champion in the ring who had great matches with many. Chris will be deeply missed.”

Forman wrote a great piece on Chris for us a few years ago. People are leaving messages for Chris on his Facebook page.

Reports are swirling that Kanyon was talking about suicide as recent as last week, and the news wasn’t surprising to many people who knew him. I’d met, chatted and emailed with Kanyon several times. He often ranted about not getting a fair shot in the WWE and how being gay hurt his career. I can’t say I was surprised to hear the news either.

I asked Kevin Nash a couple years ago whether he thought Kanyon’s sexual orientation impacted his career, and Nash praised Kanyon’s wrestling skills:

I don’t know what happened up there. Kanyon is very talented. His persona was never really strong, but as far as fundamentally doing the wrestling, there’s really nobody any better. But he just never had that look. He had good size. The bad thing about Chris was that he was best when his face was covered over, when he was Mortus. One of the top creative guys for Vince, Pat Patterson, has been openly gay for years. So I don’t think him being gay had much to do with him being released. They probably just didn’t like him.

I hope Chris has finally found peace.

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Though the young man never identified as gay or queer in any way, he was pushed and pushed.  His mother repeatedly asked teachers and school administrators to intervene but help was not forthcoming. Solutions like making the young man eat lunch with a bully to foster a relationship did no good. Unfortunately, Carl got pushed to the breaking point and hung himself.

His mother’s repeated pleas for help are now pleas for attention to bullying and the problems it can cause in children, whether they are questioning their sexuality or not.

“If anything can come of this, it’s that another child doesn’t have to suffer like this and there can be some justice for some other child. I don’t want any other parent to go through this,” she said.

Let’s all hope this young man’s tragically short life will lead to awareness and understanding for all bullied youth.

Thanks to GLSEN.org

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