While NFL player Carl Nassib comes out, homophobes go overboard pretending that they don't care

 Monday's announcement by Carl Nassib, a Las Vegas Raider defensive player, that he is gay is beneficial on so many levels.

For one, though Nassib is the first active football player to come out, his announcement is an opportunity to remember past openly gay football players like Dave Kopay, Jerry Smith, Esera Tuaolo, Michael Sam, and so many others. It's a great time to remember how they paved the way for his announcement. For another thing, positive visibility for our community and potential LGBTQ role models for our kids are always needed.

But then there is the other side of the coin, i.e. those who claim that Nassib has put undue stress on their lives and way of thinking about LGBTQ people simply because he had the audacity to not hide his sexual orientation. And such comments came via the wildly repulsive far-right site Free Republic. 

They had a time raising hell about Nassib and their comments were very amusing. Granted you may not think so, but monitoring this stuff for almost 15 years has given me a droll and cynical sense of humor.  And I admit that I enjoy reading the bigoted comments coming from the Free Republic when something pro-LGBTQ occurs. It's like observing  a zoo where you don't have to feed nuts to the animals because the nuts are the animals.

The following are some of the comments:

Yay, another colon spelunker. Like I care.

We do not care if this person is gay. We do not care if the clerk at your local grocery store is gay. Stop acting like we all need to know what you do in your bedroom. We don’t. 

Carl, whoever you are....PLEASE KEEP YOUR SEX SECRETS TO YOURSELF! UGH! 

Forty or more years ago there was an All In The Family episode where one of Archie’s professional football heroes hinted at being gay. And I swear the media breathlessly tells us every year of some pro athlete being gay. It’s old news to everyone. They announce these stories to pump their own egos. The MSM buries real news and regurgitates tired “revelations” like this ad nauseum. 

Hey, I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest. I’m straight, married to the father of our kids and never cheated. Where’s my historic headlines? 

Mr Nassib if you want adulation for enjoying a blood gorged crank up the ass you’ve come to the wrong place. 

He has an agenda. And what you think is love is really an attack on your freedoms. Even worse his agenda is targeting your children in school. Teaching them that this aberrant behavior is not just normal and natural, but any opposition is hate speech. 

Several times I have had casual acquaintances or people at work announce to me "I am gay" or "I am a lesbian" totally out of the blue and for no reason. Why do they feel the need to do that? I don't need to know and I don't want to know... 

It goes on and on like this with each participant spewing equally homophobic and badly unoriginal comments (even to the point of working in the corny "tight end, wide receiver" joke). It was like watching a schizophrenic tennis match with just about half of the comments telling Nassib to stop talking about gay sex (even though he didn't) while the other half going into details about gay sex so lurid that I was tempted to begin taking notes.

Homophobes are so amusing when kept in their cages. And it's a great reminder yet again that LGBTQ people aren't the problem.

They are.