Michael Sam’s Kiss
Okay, so here’s the deal. Lets use this one comic to get out all of the Michael Sam discussion. It’s too big an issue to not address, but over exposure can get tiresome and very irritating even if you feel strongly about a subject. Plus, I’m sure you all want me to make fun of Johnny Manziel as if his face doesn’t do enough of that already. So lets treat this as the Michael Sam discussion zone. I’ll give you all my thoughts on Sam right here and do my best to not bring it up in the future as much as possible.
So I was hoping Michael Sam would just get drafted in the late rounds, we’d get the expected bigotry and the expected articles about how progressive everyone is, how great the team that drafted him is, and all that. That’s kind of what has happened. But on twitter the day he got drafted there was a lot of discussion about him kissing his boyfriend. While a lot of it was standard bigotry, there was a discomforting amount of “I have no issues with gay people BUT” statements. It got me rather irritated.
It’s maddening because if you are smart and socially conscious just a little, you realize that any statement like that automatically qualifies the person as exactly what they are trying to say they aren’t. “I have no issue with Black People BUT (insert racist statement here)”. “I support feminism BUT (Insert sexist statement here)”. For Michael Sam’s drafting, the closeted bigots used the footage of the kiss as their easy way to get angry about gay people while proclaiming to be just fine with gay people. It’s sickening, and hypocrisy in action. Mostly for the very reason illustrated above. Where is all the outrage when new draft picks kiss their girlfriends?
The main argument I saw being thrown around was that ESPN was shoving the issue in your face. But they weren’t. They were just letting the cameras roll as a new draft pick shared an emotional special moment with the person closest to him. They weren’t pushing an agenda, they were doing what they always did. Focusing cameras on emotional players as they learn about their life changing. In the first round when Eric Ebron got drafted, one of the big stories for him that was getting pushed was that he proposed to his girlfriend on the Empire State Building. We even got shown footage of the event. I think showing a proposal is more personally intrusive than showing a player react to getting drafted, but that’s me. Where was the outrage here? Why weren’t people getting mad that we were seeing a player propose to his girlfriend, something that had almost NOTHING to do with football? Why did we need to see him propose? But nobody is asking those questions. They showed it because it made for interesting television. Same with why they show players react to getting drafted. It makes for compelling presentation. ESPN was doing what they have literally been doing for years during draft coverage. Point the camera in the right direction at the right time and let the human drama of a selection play out onscreen. It’s just that this time, the guy kissed another guy.
There is literally no other difference between that shot and what they did for other players. If Michael Sam kissing a man bothers you but other players kissing their girlfriends does not, the network isn’t the problem. You are. If Sam had kissed a girl, no one would be saying anything. For me, that’s the kicker, and that’s what pissed me off. Seeing a man kiss another man might be new to you as it doesn’t happen nearly as often, but while it might momentarily startle you if you are as truly “okay with gay people” as you proclaim to be, it shouldn’t make you that uncomfortable. It’s just a kiss. They didn’t rip each others clothes off and start going at it or anything. They did have the cake eating moment, but that happens at almost every wedding ever and nobody complains. The dude was happy and having a larf. They didn’t even suck face, none of the kisses lasted more than half a second.
Moving on from that to Sam the person, I couldn’t be happier for the guy and it was wonderful to see him get drafted. I never felt his draft status was in question. I knew he’d be taken late, he had a bad combine and large question marks as a player. I expected anywhere in the 6th or 7th. At that stage teams are mostly just grasping at straws and taking chances on dudes anyway. Sam was good enough a player to warrant some team taking a chance on him, just to see what he’s got. He was the SEC defensive player of the year, after all. There has to be something there worth looking into. I also read he had many team offers should he have become an undrafted free agent. It’s clear teams were at least intrigued by what he could do, but weren’t going to overdraft him based on his social impact. Which is a good thing. Sam deserves to be treated as a player and a human being by the league. I think for the most part he will be. He might also be used for marketing, but the NFL certainly isn’t going to shut him out. If he’s going to be talked about in the NFL, it’s going to be in an attention seeking capability and I’d rather see a team try to exploit and market the gay player then marginalize and hide him. Lesser of two evils sort of thing.
The problem with Sam is he’s always going to be a bigger deal than he should be. There needs to be a separation between Sam the human/player and Sam the symbol of social progression, but there never will be. Sadly, this is also causing problems among those of us who support him. Right now we have two main camps of Michael Sam fans. The social symbol fans, and the football fans. Both are trying to separate Sam too much from the other side.
A sentiment I’ve seen frequently of Michael Sam fans who also love football is that “We should all just shut up about him being gay and just evaluate him purely as a player.” I certainly understand this side of the argument well and probably err more on this side than the other. They don’t want Sam to be known as the “gay player”, they want Sam to just be known as a football player, as a person. They rightfully point out that his orientation should have absolutely no impact on how he is viewed. They rightfully point out that many years from now, the fact that we made such a big deal out of him being gay was silly. I get it. I want him to be seen as purely a player as much as any of them. Because the day him being gay doesn’t matter is the day we have succeeded.
But we are still far from that day.
Sam, whether we want to admit it or not, is a pioneer. He is a symbol. He is a big deal. He is a major leap forward. His next steps are equally important. If Sam becomes a great player, a good player, or even just a reliable backup, it makes it easier for other players to come out. It makes it easier to accept gay players into the NFL society. Michael Sam getting drafted is important. Where he goes from here is just as important, and to ignore what he represents would be shortsighted. Sam is a big deal.
But the people I’m the most worried about aren’t the bigots. They aren’t the people who want to separate the gay issue from the player. It’s the people who are Michael Sam fans purely for the social symbol he is. These are the people who don’t care about football but take it into the other direction, putting Sam on a pedestal not as a human or a player but as a symbol. Because if Sam fails, these people are going to be just insufferable. They tend to forget the human side of things and play up the issue he represents. I have friends who were saying that they don’t care about football, but now they are Rams fans. Because the Rams drafted the gay player. So now the Rams are “super progressive” and whatnot. The Rams aren’t any more progressive than the other teams, at least I don’t feel they are. If you want to be cynical they may have drafted Sam to help put butts in seats. He’s a local Mizzou guy, his presence on the team is going to sell tickets in the same way Tebow did.
But Sam has a pretty good chance to not make the team at all. The Rams have probably the best front 4 in all of football right now. I would wager Sam has little to no chance of being a starter on that D-line. He’s going to have to work very, very hard to gain just a backup spot. He could very easily end up cut. I want to hope the Rams can find a spot for him, but jeez. He’s got an uphill battle. He fell into the late rounds because he wasn’t a great player. If Sam gets cut…the people who see him purely as a symbol are going to be the first to cry foul. These are the same people who championed Kluwe when he got cut for “supporting gay rights”. Kluwe got cut for more than just his opinions, he also got cut for football reasons. Their efforts to push the issue are going to cause such an uproar, when it’s likely that Sam will just end up being cut because he’s not good enough. Sam, I have little doubt, will be viewed rather fairly by the Rams in the evaluation process, because I have faith (maybe too much) that we have come far enough as a society to allow it, and the NFL is more interested in money than “the issues”. I’m rooting for Sam really hard for this reason, because if he succeeds it’s good for both sides. If he fails, the uproar over the NFL being “bigoted” might actually hurt the chances of another player coming out, because he will have seen the shitstorm he could face if he doesn’t cut it. The very people who see Sam as a symbol of progression may hurt the cause if Sam doesn’t make it. I hope to the football gods I’m wrong about this, by the way.
Sam likely knew all of this going in. I’m sure the weight on his shoulders is more than anything many of us could ever face, and for his bravery, he should be admired. Michael Sam is a hero, even if it may look silly to call him that years from now. What he’s accomplished already is phenomenal. I wish him the best.
But gay! GAY I TELL YOU!
Damn that is a lot of words
THIS! Yes. This. I had this same conversation yesterday
Couldn’t have summed up my thoughts any better.
This seems appropriate: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/57702994-82/sex-attraction-bigotry-biological.html.csp
There is more to the majority unease over full marriage equality for same-sex relationships than simple religious bigotry.
By now most would agree that same-sex attraction is biologically based and genuine. Yet some are quick to derisively condemn as learned religious bigotry the feelings of the large majority of opposite-sex attraction who are uncomfortable, embarrassed and confounded with open homosexuality.
Why is it thought that in the first case the reason is biological and innate, while in the other it would be frivolous social conditioning, angrily attributed to religion?
Truth is that what is true biologically of one would be equally true of the other. I can appreciate the frustration of those of same-sex attraction. Their stand on equal civil rights is constitutionally firm.
However, to dismiss the concerns of others over changing family values as little more than religious bigotry, when the real reason is more correctly separate gay and straight biological imperatives, is to seriously mischaracterize the issue.
Andrew McDonald
Mapleton
I never once mentioned religion in my entire post, so I’m not sure why you’d bring this post into the equation. I don’t care why someone is adverse to it, the point is that they are for dumb reasons.
Also, for a guy pushing the Biotruth argument for aversion to homosexuality, he sources literally zero articles/studies/etc. that would support his point. It’s like he just pulled the biotruth argument out of his ass. Know why? because he is.
There is no evidence to back up such claims. You can’t just label something as biological in nature without having evidence to back it up. Evidence that homosexuality is biological in nature include the fact that homosexual relationships have been found in hundreds of different species of animals. Aversion to homosexuality has only been identified in one species. To make such claims, one needs evidence, and currently, such evidence simply doesn’t exist.
Spot on, Dave.
I’m not hating on gays but if Sam is a Ram there is no way I can like that guy. As a 49er fan I have to hate anyone on the Rams. On a side note watching Michael Sam get drafted and the joy on his face and the kiss were probably the highlight of the draft. A black man kissing a white man on live TV might have made a few heads explode. Very cool.
The interesting thing here is: you started a post with “I’m not hating on gays but…” and then ended it in a way that did not contradict this opening. This may be an internet first.
It’s not often that I agree with Colin Cowherd, he’s an asshat most of the time, but he absolutely bullseyed thishypocrisy on yesterday’s Herd. If this was a draft for the Lingerie Football League, bitching would be near zero at a gay kiss. Internet traffic would probably crash North American ISPs, but you wouldn’t hear a peep out if the bigots.
Just a fap or three.
From the beginning I was rooting for Sam and I’m glad he got drafted but ESPN was making the kiss to big of a deal. So what if he kissed his boyfriend? It’s just a kiss! There weren’t devowering each other’s faces other anything!
ESPN has gone overboard with showing the kiss since then, but they are only showing it all the time because people are complaining and talking about it, which means it’s a hot topic of discussion so of course it’s going to get shown more. It’s a cycle of hilarity. They show a kiss, tons of stupid people get angry, so ESPN talks about the controversy and shows the kiss, which keeps people talking about the kiss, which means they get to show the kiss more….
If people want the kiss to go away they need to shut up about it.
Hey if two guys want to kiss on camera go right ahead. Every gay male couple that’s allowed to actually hook up instead of forced to conform to society’s norms equals two women back into the dating pool. Not that it would help my chances much though. #foreveralone
And i’m a Christian too by the way… just not one that sees why what two other consenting adults do is any of my business…
Y”know, I’m somewhat of a LGBT rights activist, and I’m happy to see Sam get drafted. I’m perfectly fine with them showing the kiss, but I will admit its been overplayed since then. I usually tend to feel that religious bigots are the worst kind of people, as they usually have no concrete evidence to back up claims such as saying that homosexuality is evil, or that gays will go to Hell. Dave, I feel that you nailed how most people, including me, feel about all the critics of this craziness.
I hope Michael Sam succeeds in the NFL, and opens the floodgates for more gay players.
-jets
Let me say upfront I support LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, etc.
The problem, for a straight person such as myself, is that I really have no idea of the pressure and stress of trying to hide a critical piece of who you are as a person, and don’t have any conception of what it is like to finally come out and “live your truth”. So what is a life-changing event for one person, becomes an eye-roll as yet another celebrity-du-jour comes out of the closet. As important as it is for that person, it gets tiresome for the rest of us. I don’t want/need to hear every gay person publicly proclaim their sexuality.
And yes, ESPN is guilty of shoving it in our face, as is every other media whenever they cover another person who comes out. How many other mediocre, 6th-7th round players had a camera crew in their house following them around all day? None, I think.
So yeah, I get the social importance of it. I couldn’t care less about the kiss (although part of the fun of these kisses is that the players usually have smoking-hot girlfriends I can stare at… would Sam’s boyfriend qualify as hot? I can’t judge), but I long for the day when mediocre players (did he really get out-benchpressed by 8 *wide receivers* at the combine?) get the coverage they deserve for their football talent.
Yes, his boyfriend is hot.
Really hope the kid has what it takes to succeed, and that he does so. If he fails, then like you said, the amount of uproar from pro-gay people that refuse to acknowledge that maybe he wasn’t destined to be the next Jackie Robinson could end up dissuading other gay players from coming out, especially since it’d also just end up reinforcing the idiotic “Gay men aren’t good enough for the NFL” stereotype that a lot of people seem to have, so both sides will make them more afraid.
As much as we like to pretend that they’re superhuman, a lot of these guys are just kids, they’re 20, 21, 22 years old. They’re still a little insecure and really concerned about what other people think, especially if they’ve been hiding that big a part of themselves for years. If Michael Sam fails, it’s just making the glass ceiling even stronger for the guy that inevitably breaks it.
All of that is irrelevant if he succeeds though, and that’s what I hope happens. I’m waiting to see him in preseason to see how he fits and how he does before I jump on either side of the “He can play/he can’t play” debate, but St. Louis has needs at OLB, so if he can work on his coverage skills, it might work. Even if he fizzles out in St. Louis though, there’s enough of a demand for rotational pass rushers that someone will pick him up, probably a 3-4 team since they can use tweeners more productively. Good luck Michael Sam, I’m cheering for you.
“I’d rather see a team try to exploit and market the gay player then marginalize and hide him.”
The difference between “then” and “than” is very, very important here.
I’m going to disagree with one (and only one) point you made in this. Years from now, I doubt seriously we will look back and consider how silly it was to consider Michael Sam a hero. For the same reasons we don’t look back at Jackie Robinson and consider it silly. Sam may not last in the NFL, he may never achieve the same type of on the field success that Robinson did, but he’s still the first, he’s still breaking a social boundary that not a lot of people would be brave enough to try to cross.
I wish him luck. I doubt he’ll stick on the Rams, I just don’t see him as talented enough to find a spot on that roster. But I do think that he’s talented enough to fill a solid backup role somewhere else, and with work may even find himself a starter somewhere. Who knows?
I feel like the Rams are now throwing stones in a glass house now with how much can go wrong combined with the huge amount of media he is getting.
Hey Dave you hear about the reality show that Sam signed off on? So much for just wanting to be know as a football player and not the gay football player.
I did. I was pretty disappointed to hear it. And it’s not even a football-centric show about rookies or something but Oprah produced. Up until now it seemed like he was mostly doing his best to focus on the football part. On one hand, I can’t blame the guy too much, because I’m sure that deal came with a nice paycheck and it might allow him to become a media personality afterward, but it was still contrary to the Sam we’ve seen up to this point. Of course, we haven’t seen the show, so we might need to hold off on final judgements.
However if he fell in the draft due to teams not wanting the media circus around him, this is not going to help his cause.
I’m pretty sure he fell in the draft because he’s not a very good football player. Ultimately I can’t blame him for doing this because a 7th round rookie’s paycheck is very low for the amount of risks he’s taking and he’s not even guaranteed a roster spot, especially on a team as deep on the DL as the Rams. Taking advantage of any chance he has to cash in on his status is the smart thing to do. I’m going to blame everyone else for paying so much attention that it is actually profitable for him to do it. A 7th round rookie should NOT be this much of a celebrity.
blah blah blah…
Who Cares?
FOOTBALL IS COMING!
While the first kiss was sweet, the cake thing was just odd. However, I’m more than aware that it’s just me, and it’s for the same reason I’d never want to be pied in the face. I’d just feel the need to shower and not feel icky.
I’d feel the exact same way if I saw a straight player smashing cake in their girlfriend’s face, by the way. It’s more about the cake than anything else. Why waste cake and then force yourself to shower, all the while providing sugar and nourishment to the bacteria on your skin?
You know, I think being a hypochondriac might also have something to do with this.
Gay black…how many rungs is this guy dropping down the social ladder? White queer with him..real sick..At this rate within 30 years pedophiles will have rights. He is a deviant..a freak..wake up you bunch of politically correct arsewipes. Our country has been going down the crapper ever since we started this polically correct crap. Think about this..every protestant that goes to a catholic school is a RACIST..they pay to go to a WHITE school..so they dont go to public/black schools. Id love to see all these politically correct liberals hang out in compton or east st louis and tell me how great minorities are. bunch of bs.
Man shut the fuck up
You are banned from this thread for life and I call upon your peers to force you to sell your account.
I wonder if he’s trolling
I’m not disappointed in him, I’m disappointed in the media. They latch on to his sexuality and rake in views and karma points for their reddits just by making a bigger deal about this. Any negative comment will be used as ammo for their agenda with him. This kiss sealed the deal for a long time. Now there is that Oprah show just for him, it’s way too early for that. What if he gets cut before the season starts? Mike’s career has many options now: cut and fades away, reliable backup, Tim Tebow, or Franchise. It’s too early to tell, but we’ll know soon if the hype is worth it.
It wasn’t the kiss so much as the celebration itself… I mean when was the last time Anyone celebrated being drafted by the RAMS????