For your pre-weekend reading, ESPN.com has an interview with Morehead State University basketball star Kenneth Faried, who talks about the influence of his two moms, one of whom is battling lupus. “When they got married,” he said, “that showed me what commitment is all about, that there are people out there that can commit, even though for them it really has been the worst of times. I look at them, what they’ve been through and I think, ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’ They’re amazing to me.”
Notable, too, is that ESPN writer Dana O’Neil says Faried never encountered any teasing about his family while he was growing up in New Jersey, and that his moms never had to sit down and discuss issues of acceptance with him. He just accepted, without needing an explanation. O’Neil writes of his moms: “They loved one another, they love their kids and now they love their nine grandkids. Life is only complicated if you make it that way.”
Homophobia is rampant in professional and collegiate sports, as folks like Pat Griffin have extensively documented. The fear extends to secondary schools as well, as Stuart Biegel and Sheila James Kuehl have shown. People like Faried, however (who now lives in Kentucky, not the most gay-friendly of states), may help break down the barriers. Major kudos to ESPN as well, for publishing such a positive article.
