Possibly the only time you’ll ever see me care about pro sports.

Frank Duford. Probably knows more about sports than anybody alive — or at least, if anybody else knows more, they’re not articulate enough to bother listening to. (i.e. that creepy guy at 7-11…)

So yesterday he delivers this great rant about “numbskulls” and homophobes in professional sports. His conclusion: They may be thick at times, but athletes have to work and get along like anybody else, and peer pressure is just as powerful a force in the locker room as it is in the boardroom. In other words, as pro athletes “come out”, there’ll be controversy, and eventually the fans and the rest of the team–the vast majority of which are not homophobes–will shame the “numbskulls” into evolving or at least keeping their mouths shut.

Very astute and reasonable view; I was glad to hear it. But some listener wasn’t, and wrote NPR this morning to say–well, really to whine–”Why does a gay person have to step forward before” the insults and idiocy stop?

You know what? I’d love it if everybody accepted everything about me without having to meet me first. In fact, give me a world where everybody accepts everything about everybody else, unconditionally and without struggle, and without the need to actually come face-to-face with their own beliefs and prejudices first. If this f*cker lives in that world and he’s keeping me out, I’ll be really pissed, seriously.

However, in common reality, it doesn’t work that way. And it never will until we live on Earth Populated Entirely By Zen Masters. Until some very simple people manage to grasp a very abstract concept about universal compassion, we’re just going to have to deal with educating them one case at a time. They may have to fight about the gay athlete so that the people who are right can win in the court of public opinion, and sway the people who are wrong. They may have to drag racial and economic discrimination out into the light before the people who benefit from it can be made to cease doing it, either because they understand or at least because they’re smart enough to cover their own asses. (And if they’re not, may St. Darwin watch over them.)

And of course, anybody who doesn’t know me will misjudge me, and anybody who’s misjudging me must not know me. (Reason #87 not to care what people say: the necessity of ignorance.) …Um, including me.

Play ball!