HE’S finally done it. After a procession of biographies, tell-all interviews and “candid” documentaries, swimming legend Ian Thorpe stopped the farcical self-mythologising and came clean about his sexuality on Sunday night.
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That it took a 90-minute television special, and reportedly a giant wad of cash, to reveal two words that everyone already knew – “I’m gay” – says more about commercial realities than anything else.
Indeed, it was commercial realities that kept Thorpedo in the closet for so long.
Even in 2014 Australia, an openly gay swimming star has less earning potential out of the pool than if he were straight.
Whether Thorpe’s “outing” is a watershed moment for the gay rights movement is still to be written, but there’s little doubt it will help some young people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality.
It can’t be easy being gay.
Although society has made great leaps – amid the occasional stumble – on its way to shaking the antiquated prejudices applied to race and religion, the same acceptance of homosexuality has been slower to materialise.
In schoolyards, gay slurs are thrown like confetti at anyone who dares challenge the notion of the conventional Australian male or female stereotype – regardless of whether the target of the vitriol is gay or straight.
Perhaps, though, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these prejudices are so prevalent.
For too long there has been a chronic lack of leadership among the usual bastions of moral decency: the church and the state.
Only through the most gritted of teeth have most governments and churches made any concessions that are likely to bring about a change in people’s attitudes towards homosexuality or gay marriage.
This is not a matter of political correctness or affirmative action – it’s about a person’s basic right to be themselves without being vilified.
Being born gay is just as arbitrary as being born black or white.
But as long as society is anti-gay, then it will seem like being gay is anti-social.