aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, September 18, 2006

Sports holds boys back

There’s no football at our school. When pressure builds for it, this is the argument I’ll make against it:

This fall, 58 percent of the U.S. college population will be female, and more women stay in college and more apply all the time. When this freshman class graduates in 2010, the Department of Education estimates that as many as three out of every five diplomas may very well go to women.

Now there are a lot of reasons which may account for this, including the dread possibility that the weaker sex, so-called, may be, well, simply smarter than we dim brutes. But I certainly think that at least some of this scholastic imbalance may be accounted for by the fact that from an early age, boys are directed towards sports and rewarded more for their athletic prowess than for their classroom work.

For boys, readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic have been replaced by a new set of three R’s: runnin’, reboundin’ and let’s go to the replay.

It isn’t either just that classic inner city delusion where little boys bet their future on becoming a great multi-millionaire sports superstar. No, in our middle classes all too many parents push children to excel in sport so that their child might win a college athletic scholarship.

This is the cockeyed system we’ve developed in the United States wherein the free road to a college education is through a tennis court or a soccer field, while someone more accomplished in the school classroom has a harder time getting to the college classroom.

The argument is from Frank Deford who has been writing for Sports Illustrated since the 60s.

Come out! Come out! Wherever you are!

I have no sympathy, none!, for McGreevey. Never did. Rothstein’s right:

McGreevey’s story is NOT a coming out story; rather it is an involuntary outing story born of political corruption and dishonesty.

McGreevey was forced out of the closet by blackmail and scandal. He did nothing noble and should be no one’s hero.  And when Oprah hugs him and has her audience give him love on Tuesday, I suppose that will be the Christian thing to do.  But some of us will cringe.

Speaking of cringing, nothing is more telling about the lack of gay acceptance and the need for gay marriage than this:

Nearly one in 10 men who say they’re straight have sex only with other men, a New York City survey finds.

And 70% of those straight-identified men having sex with men are married.

In fact, 10% of all married men in this survey report same-sex behavior during the past year.

SEE ALSO: Being gay is a choice. The right choice!.