Irish Sports Star Comes Out

In case you haven't heard already, there's amazement and consternation in Ireland these days since hurling star Donal Óg Cusack came out of the closet.  Andrew Sullivan, who is part Irish, says it's a BFD over there.

Hurling, in Ireland anyway, has nothing to do with fraternity parties.  As near as I can make out, it's something like soccer, only played at breakneck speed with a tennis ball and hockey sticks.  The object of the game presumably is to put the ball between the goal posts while bashing your opponent's heads in en route.  That ought to be butch enough for anybody.

Eamonn Sweeney, writing in the Irish paper, the Sunday Independent:

[N]obody should underestimate the bravery it took for the Cork goalkeeper to publicly come out as a gay man in his autobiography or what a huge step forward this represents for Irish sport. We should also understand what a huge challenge it is to the bigotry and prejudice which remain against gay people in this society.

Perhaps there are people reading this column and thinking, 'Why is there such a big deal being made about it? Why do gays have to go on about their sexuality so much?' But it's not gay people who make an issue of homosexuality, it's straight people. Most straight men have, for example, been in a pub with a woman and, suddenly overcome by affection, leaned across and kissed her.

If a gay man did this with his partner, he'd be regarded as looking for trouble in most of the country's pubs. There's even a chance he'd suffer physical violence. Do gay couples walk arm-in-arm down our main streets with the same unselfconsciousness and freedom as straight couples do? They don't because straight people wouldn't stand for it. In most towns every pub is a Straight Bar.

This is the country Donal óg Cusack lives in. . . .

Sometimes we kid ourselves that we're tolerant because we condescend to accept flamboyant gay men in the Julian Clary/Graham Norton mould. But we have more problems with accepting our gay neighbours, our gay relations, the gay mechanic, the gay bricklayer and the gay farmer. That's another reason why it's such a big deal that Donal óg came out. Because one look at how the man plays the game is sufficient to destroy that old myth that gay men are uniformly effeminate, sissyish and, above all, instantly recognisable.

Even though he now faces vile shouts and homophobic abuse at games - his mum has had to quit going to see him play, it's too upsetting for her - Cusack says he hopes his story helps others still in the closet: