Tolerance in Action–and in the Locker Room

Inkwell recently had an item about how, after decades of preaching tolerance, self-righteous liberals sometimes find the virtue hard to practice. Here is a story about real tolerance-and in the world of sports, no less. It’s about an LA Times sports writer who three months ago came out as a transsexual and began living and writing as Christine Daniels.

An email from a jock pal says it all:  

“There was lots of twittering among the leftie sports journalists at the time that Christine was going to be mocked and shunned – not just in the locker room by the Neanderthal pro athletes, but also by Joe-six-pack readers.

  “Turns out, none of that happened.  In fact, quite the opposite.  According to Daniels, she was inundated with encouraging emails from readers – almost unanimously positive – and received similar support and acceptance from colleagues and athletes alike.  

    “One lesson from that would seem to be: the locker room culture and America in general is not as reflexively bigoted as we have been led to believe.  The notion that male athletics is automatically hostile to any hint of anything GLBT – as sportswriters have been insisting for years — might be wrong.  If a gay baseball player were to come out, there’s ample reason to expect he would get the same reaction that Daniels did – at worst, a shrug, and probably a pat on the back.  After all, they are both working in the same environment around the same people – and Daniels, as a journalist, has far less social clout.”

Daniels, to her credit, talked about how easy, from a public perceptions view, the transition had been. But that did not stop the NPR reporter from closing with this gem:

They never give up, do they?