This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Three or four months from now, professional football players on an as-yet-unknown team are going to look an openly gay rookie in the eye and they are going to introduce him to the brutal physicality of the National Football League ("Michael Sam could become NFL's first openly gay player," Tribune, Feb. 10). Due to social bias and the ignorance of youth, some of the players will subject Michael Sam to abuses far worse than those levied at other rookies, and then the inevitable will happen.
They will begin to see Michael Sam, the man, the peer and the teammate and not Michael Sam, the gay player. They will fight alongside of him, they will fight for him and they will know that he fights for them. They will accept him, though some reluctantly, into their fraternity and in time they will wonder how and why they ever harbored such animosity toward a person due to his sexuality.
After they reject their preconceived biases against gays, they will begin to, consciously or not, quell other biases they hold toward certain groups or classes of humankind.
The players, the NFL and society will be better because of it.
Scott Crowder
West Valley City