What a brave lad! ⚽️?‍❤️‍?

It’s headline news because it’s rare.

It’s rare because homophobia is still common, and is rife in football.

It’s important because young gay men need role models, and Jake is one.

And it is incredibly brave to come out to the world. It’s brave, actually, when any one, of any age, comes out (which for most people is all the time, over and over, in so many new situations), because you never know how others will react. And after the first time, you know from experience that some reactions will be less than positive.

In my nursing days I cared for a lovely 85 yr old man during the last year of his life. I was very fond of him and we had lovely chats while I was attending to his personal care.

One night when I was settling him into bed he “came out” to me during our chat about his much loved mother. He was devoted to her and lived with her till her death.

Despite their close bond he was never able to discuss the subject with her and assumed she had never given much thought to why he was a life long bachelor. He told me he managed to have a few brief relationships but never in his home town. He felt forced to lead a secret life and had never admitted to any friends or family that he was gay till that night aged 85 and a few weeks before his death. I’ve never forgotten him and it makes me sad to think of how he felt he had to lead his life.

Thankfully, we are moving on from that era. But from what I hear from my 15 yr old granddaughter, about a girl in her class being taunted by some boys for revealing her sexuality, we have a way to go.

I have two female friends, and at least one male, who are single and not gay. They just never found anyone they really wanted to marry. It’s naive to think all people who ‘never married’ are gay.

G70’s I didn’t mean that at all.

Of course there are unmarried non- homosexuals!

But it was a commonly used euphemism in newspaper obituaries, as I previously said

I wish we had “moved on” from homophobia but that this young man felt that he had to “come out” just shows that this is not the case.
Of course things have improved since my gay son was in school, where his life was made a misery by bullies (not always the children either!)

However if you do not have anyone close to you who is gay, you may think there is no longer a problem, but there is. Homosexuality may be accepted, and even fashionable, for example in the entertainment industry, but there can still be a lot of prejudice in daily life.

I have known evangelical Christians who would not accept their child being gay and the Government has only just agreed to ban gay conversion therapy, but not for gender identity.

I’m so sorry to read your son had to endure such treatment at school Farzanah ?

Thank you Grannynanny.

A brave young man who has hopefully made life an awful lot easier for other gay footballers, and statistically, there must be many. It is sad though that this has to be front page news, it really has no impact on how he plays football, hopefully one day this will be totally irrelevant. As an aside, I wonder how this will work out if a player comes out while they are signed by one of the football clubs owned by Saudi Arabian billionaires?

Gareth Thomas came out as gay whilst he was still playing top level rugby, and was supported by both his teammates and Welsh rugby fans, he’s done a lot to publicly highlight the continuing issues in sport, and in football in particular which he feels is the worst of all sports for prejudice. We need more like him, who take a stance on behalf of others, I’m sure he’ll offer any support he can give to Jake.

Interesting point made by 2 professional footballers on J'OB this morning. The gay footballer will face the crowd for 90 minutes a week but will be in the changing rooms with the rest of the team 300 days a year. Apparently much of the homophobia comes from the rest of the squad and is much more difficult to deal with.

I think that young man is very brave. And so young.

I think he’s been relatively discreet compared to a lot of other footballers. They constantly have their wives and girlfriends hanging off their arms - fine, live your life like that but no one cares and there’s no need to flaunt your sexuality.