Breaking the Silence: Broad Support for Footballer's Coming Out

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/ex-german-football-pro-hitzlsperger-acknowledges-homosexuality-a-942611.html



Former German national team player Thomas Hitzlsperger on Wednesday became the first professional footballer in the country to acknowledge his homosexuality. The upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia, he said, was a reason for going public now.

Breaking the Silence: Broad Support for Footballer's Coming Out
January 09, 2014 – 12:38 PM

It is the kind of sensation that should no longer really be one. On Wednesday, retired professional football player Thomas Hitzlsperger, who was long a fixture on Germany's national team, became the first high-profile German soccer player to publicly announce his homosexuality.

"For a number of years, I have taken the view that the intrusive questions about my sexuality and that of other footballers have to stop," Hitzlsperger said in a statement released on his new website, which went live at midnight on Wednesday night. "They force weaker people to live a lie. If the issue of homosexuality is to be debated, however, then I would like to offer my own contribution to what is being said, glossed over or concealed."

In his statement, Hitzlsperger said that he believed today's society is much more open than many believe and that sexual orientation should "no longer be treated as a scandal." The public reaction to the player's coming out would seem to support that statement. Politicians of all stripes released statements on Wednesday praising Hitzlsperger for his courage, including the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"We live in a country in which nobody should be afraid to acknowledge their sexuality only due to fear of intolerance," said Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert. In Germany, he went on, football players are judged on the basis of whether they behave "well and with dignity" on the field and off. Hitzlsperger, he said, is a good example for both.

[DemocraticWing]

1. He played for Everton (the team I pull for) last season.

It seems like the club has been supportive of his coming out. Liverpool (the city in general) has by all accounts come a long way in establishing an LGBT community, so it would be nice to have an active player come out one day.