Gay Soccer Stud Robbie Rogers Scores Cover & Interview With Out Magazine.
Robbie Rogers: The History Maker
7.11.2013
By Matthew Breen
Robbie Rogers’s journey from closeted soccer player to LGBT role model has been as dramatic as it is inspiring.
Photography by Matthias Vriens-McGrath
On February 15 of this year, at the age of 25, Robbie Rogers made a dramatic announcement on his website: He was gay, and he was quitting soccer. The two points were not unrelated — no male American athlete in a major team sport had come out while still playing professionally (although gay-friendly Sweden set a precedent when soccer player Anton Hysén came out there in 2011). Then in May, Rogers reversed course on one of those announcements and signed to the Los Angeles Galaxy.
He was no longer a gay retired soccer player; he was a history maker — just six months after coming out to his “conservative, Catholic, close-knit” family. “Growing up, I learned that being gay was a sin,” he says when we meet at Soho House in Los Angeles. “It was not something you could be, and it wasn’t something my family would talk about much — it was obviously something that scared the shit out of me.”
It’s only been a few weeks since he had his first match as an out gay player (stepping onto the field 13 minutes before the final whistle), and it’s clear that Rogers, who grew up in Orange County, has embraced his newfound role with gusto. Having played for one of the world’s most decorated teams — England’s Leeds United — as well as for the U.S. squad at the Beijing Olympics, Rogers, now 26, is in the rare position of being able to inspire young gay athletes by his example. Being invited to attend the Nike LGBT Youth Forum in Oregon in April was a wake-up call, he says. “I left the summit thinking, Come on, step up — all these kids are so excited to make a change, you should also. God’s given you the talent to be a soccer player, to be in front of people just to show them who you are.”
Who he is, who he was, and how he got from one to the other is the subject of our conversation as Rogers opens up in a candid, thoughtful interview that reflects the emotional distance he’s travelled since hitting “send” a mere five months earlier.
Out: You told one reporter you felt different around age 10, like a part of you knew.
Robbie Rogers: I felt different for a long time, but when I was 14 and going to high school, I was like, Oh, OK. This is what’s going on: I’m gay. And then it was, I’m good at soccer as well… there are no gay soccer players.
Did you keep them separate in your head?
RR: I just repressed being a gay male, as awful as that sounds. I look back now and think, Gosh, that’s sad. To think there are other kids [feeling] like that is really scary, but I just felt that soccer was so important in my life that I was willing to do it.
There must have been accomplishments that you couldn’t enjoy because you were closeted.
RR: I’d turned into a professional player — something I’d wanted my whole life — and wasn’t able to soak it in because I shut down emotionally and didn’t get to feel all of the emotions I would have as a normal person who’s happy with himself. Winning the MLS [Major League Soccer] cup, or being on the All-Star team, or going to the Olympics — those should be things you can be happy and excited about, but you’re still hiding inside yourself and you’re not comfortable in your own skin. Or moving to England and signing with Leeds, or even stuff like my sister getting married, or little birthday parties.
Playing soccer in the U.K. is very different from the U.S., right?
RR: Yeah. Imagine an American football game, but on steroids. People live and die for soccer; they breathe it. It’s insane. The club you grow up supporting, that’s the club you will do anything for — you bleed whatever colors that team is. People will say anything to the opposing team to justify… to hopefully get an edge. The fans will call you anything, say anything about your parents or whatever.
So I imagine you heard a lot of antigay–
RR: Yeah, you’d hear the most ridiculous things from kids. And the crazy part is these people aren’t homophobic, a lot of them aren’t racist. But they get into this packed stadium where they’re just trying to win and destroy people — manners and humanity are just gone.
It’s got to get into your head, thinking about coming out.
RR: The biggest thing for me was being in the locker room, again, with a group of guys. Because those are the guys you’re with every day; they become like brothers, guys that you fight and train with every day. I didn’t want to be in a situation where I was a total outcast, where people would be walking on eggshells around me, talking behind my back. They haven’t, but that possibility scared the shit out of me. It was like, I don’t want it to be like that, I don’t want to live my life that way.
Talking about the locker room, I imagine there’s talk about women and sex there. How did you feel when that happened?
RR: It was awkward. Before I became true to myself I dated girls. I very much acted the part as a straight footballer, which is pretty sad, but I felt like I had to mask that side of me. Going to Leeds was the best thing that could have happened because I was there by myself; I realized I wasn’t happy and hadn’t been happy in a long time. I didn’t want to be one of those people who are always unhappy and don’t try to change anything. I thought, Now that you’re 25, make a change because you have the power to do it. Which was obviously the best thing ever for me, because I’m actually happy.
You’ve said that before coming out you hadn’t hooked up with any guys. Have you made up for lost time?
RR: How do I answer this? I’m very conservative, but I have met some good people that I’ve hung out with. In London I dated a guy for a few months. He’s still one of my good friends, but it’s been tough to meet people in West Hollywood.
If someone wants to ask you out, what’s your advice on how to make a good impression?
RR: It bothers me when someone tries to hook me up with a friend — “You’re gay, my friend’s gay, you’re gonna love each other.” It’s like, OK, probably not. It has to happen in an organic way, where someone introduces himself and is genuine and doesn’t want to talk about soccer straight out the gate. When I started dating this guy in London, I just went up to him. I’m sure I’ll meet someone in a random place– the grocery store or wherever.
You’ve said that you wanted to be a footballer and not a spokesperson. Do you still feel that way?
RR: No, the exact opposite. I want to help people, especially kids who felt the same way I did; it makes me sick to remember the way I felt and to think that…they don’t have a choice of who they are and they feel the same way I used to feel. Now I have this platform that hopefully I can use to reach people in a positive way. This is a learning process for me, but I don’t want to give advice. I’ve just come to terms with myself, so who am I to be giving advice? I love to share my story with these kids and hang out with kids or people or grown men who are struggling, and I’m very happy that God’s given me the courage to try to help in that way.
For many people, being out is a process from acceptance to pride — it can take a while. That doesn’t seem to be the case with you.
RR: Sometimes I’ll talk to people and they’ll be like, “You must still be trying to get used to things; trying to figure things out,” and I’m like, “I don’t know, I feel quite comfortable.” Being gay doesn’t define me but it is a big part of me, and I have amazing friends that are gay men — straight friends as well, but these guys are such courageous and creative and loving people that it’s made it easier to be, like, “Of course I’m happy with who I am.” I got back from London and New York a few months back and I had dinner with my family, a simple barbeque in our house in Huntington, sitting around the table with my dog and everyone, and it was like, This is what life is like, this is what hanging out with your family is supposed to feel like. How nuts is it that for 25 years I didn’t feel that way, and then it’s, like, Gosh, Robbie, what took you so long?”
Out Magazine Interview: NFL Stud Chris Kluwe Talks Same Sex Marriage, Gay Rights, & Football Career.
Chris Kluwe: Kick Ass
10.2.2012
BY CYD ZEIGLER
Photography by David Bowman
“Your insults can’t be the standard fuck, shit, bitch — it has to be something that sticks in people’s minds,” says Chris Kluwe, the Minnesota Vikings punter, explaining how to craft a devastating letter to someone whose views you hold reprehensible. “Generally the way you do that is to take a swear word—usually a part of someone’s anatomy — and attach it to something else that it normally wouldn’t go with. When you come up with a good one, you’ll know you have it because you’ll just start giggling to yourself.”
For example, “lustful cockmonster.”
On September 7, you could sense the howls of laughter reverberating across the Internet after Kluwe’sexcoriating letter to Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. was published on the sports fansite Deadspin and quickly went viral. A week earlier, in a letter brimming with self-importance, Burns had told the Baltimore Ravens to “order” linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo to cease advocating for same-sex marriage. Kluwe’s response was a master class in how to take down a pompous and wrong-headed ass.
“I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland’s state government,” Kluwe’s letter started, reasonably enough. “Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level.” Kluwe then went on to dismantle Burns’s position, point by point, culminating in a crescendo of wit and impishness — and that now-fabled coinage. It’s worth running the penultimate paragraph in full, if only because it does such a good job of clarifying the issues:
“I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won’t even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population — rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?”
Oh, he also called Burns a “narcissistic fromunda stain” — which is just showing off.
With all the attention on Kluwe’s letter, it’s easy to forget that he was, in turn, inspired by another football player, the Ravens’s Ayanbadejo, busy fighting his own corner in Baltimore. In November, voters in both Minnesota and Maryland will be faced with marriage-equality ballot initiatives, so the high-profile stance of Kluwe and Ayanbadejo could have real and profound consequences. The positions of both men not only reflect how quickly opinion is shifting, but also spotlight the need to check our own preconceptions of the sports world as inherently intolerant and homophobic.
“I’ve always relished breaking that stereotype of the dumb jock athlete because while I enjoyed athletics growing up, I also enjoyed reading and video games, and athletic sport is not what defines me as a person,” says Kluwe. “I think as more and more generations start rising through the NFL, a lot of these kids see that it’s OK to be something other than an athlete.”
ESPN radio sportscaster, Jared Max, who came out in 2011, agrees, pointing out that the lifespan of an NFL player is much shorter than most other sports, generating faster turnover. “I strongly believe that goodness is contagious and that others will jump on board as the younger generation begins to populate the NFL,” he says, with some justification given a recent poll by Outsports.com, which identified 28 current NFL players who’ve expressed support for gay rights. For Max, players like Kluwe and Ayanbadejo deserve comparison to earlier taboo-busters like Branch Rickey, who broke through Major League Baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers in 1945.
But for Kluwe, taking a stand on gay rights is as instinctual as planting his foot into a ball. “It’s all about the Golden Rule,” he says. “Treat other people as you want to be treated. It’s that simple. It’s something that needs to be spoken about, and it’s something I can do while fulfilling my job as a football player.”
Growing up in Los Alamitos, Calif., 20 miles south of Los Angeles, Kluwe’s parents preached to their son a mantra of tolerance with a profanity-free lexicon. Neither stuck at the time. As a tween, gay slurs peppered his speech with the same heedlessness as his peers. “Unfortunately, as kids, sometimes you don’t understand what your words can mean because you’re not emotionally mature enough yet,” he says. “As you grow up and start learning about the world, you realize, Hey, some of this stuff is hurtful; I would not want to be treated that way. That’s part of maturing.”
Kluwe’s voracious appetite for reading was also instrumental. He displays an old-fashioned ability to quote Voltaire or Ralph Waldo Emerson and reads so much sci-fi and fantasy that he jokes that Barnes & Noble can’t keep up. On his active Twitter account, he’ll solicit suggestions for his book list. A recent post reads, “This Vonnegut guy, I like the cut of his jib.” A few hours later, he’d already updated it: “Damn. Slaughterhouse 5 makes me want to simultaneously punch and hug the entire human race. The same stupid cycle over and over.”
It’s easy to trace Kluwe, the outspoken gay rights advocate, through his childhood obsessions with gaming and sci-fi. The thrust and parry of video-game discussion boards, he says, helped to hone his debating skills; his love of books expanded his vocabulary. At the same time, his immersion into the worlds of Terry Pratchett and Iain M. Banks — two of his favorite writers — has merely served to accentuate the flaws and injustices of the real world.
“It’s definitely influenced the way I think,” he admits. “You look at all the sci-fi utopias, and, pretty much in every single one, the basic underlying philosophy is that people treat each other the way they want to be treated and there’s freedom to be who you are. What brings these utopias crashing down is the fact that one group tries to take control of another, and I think that’s very applicable to any sort of human or civil rights campaign.”
It’s no surprise that Kluwe is an avid fan of the role-playing game World of Warcraft (his avatar is a troll called Loate), so much so that his Twitter handle is @ChrisWarcraft. Among the things he loves most about such games are the parallels they offer to our culture’s battle over freedom. In World of Warcraft, he becomes a champion against evil oppressive forces. Losing isn’t an option.
While World of Warcraft forums don’t allow much space for dissecting Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Kluwe carved a space for himself by learning how to push the right buttons to get into other gamers’ heads. “I’ve found one of the most devastating ways to get a point across was to mix factual information with clever insults,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of training on how to get people riled up.”
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