Becoming only the sixth professional male athlete from one of the four major US sports - basketball, baseball, football and hockey - to openly discuss his homosexuality, John Amaechi has been named a national spokesperson for a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) project aimed at helping LGBT people come out and live openly gay.
Top: tennis champion Martina Navratilova, WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes and diver Greg Louganis. The most notable professional athlete to have come out while still competing is tennis star and outspoken lesbian activist Martina Navratilova whose 168 Single's Titles outnumber any other player, male or female. She came out in 1981. More recently in 2005, Sheryl Swoopes, one of women's basketball's biggest stars became the third openly gay player in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) after former WNBA player Michele Van Gorp came out while being an active player in July 2004. In 2002, Sue Wicks became the first active WNBA player to acknowledge that she was gay shortly before she retired.
Like Amaechi, the other five male professional athletes - football players David Kopay, Esera Tuaolo and Roy Simmons, and baseball players Billy Bean and the late Glenn Burke - came out after their careers ended. Kopay was the first retired athlete to come out in 1977 with his book, The David Kopay Story. Other well-known gay male athletes are American Greg Louganis, a four-time Olympic gold medalist in diving, who announced that he is gay in 1994 and HIV-positive the year after; and Australian rugby player Ian Roberts became the first major sports personality in Australia to come out in 1995.
Raised in Manchester, England, the 2.08-metre tall former player is the only British player to have an NBA career playing for the Houston Rockets, the Orlando Magic, the Utah Jazz and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"John is making history this week, becoming the first NBA player to ever come out and talk about his life and experiences as an athlete and a gay man," said HRC President Joe Solmonese.
"In sharing his story, our great hope is that John will pave the way for more GLBT and straight athletes to openly support fairness and respect on and off the playing field."
While the news has sparked a flurry of discussion, not all were positive as some newspaper commentators were unimpressed with Amaechi's announcement.
Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle blasted the decision by all six professional players to come out after retirement: "John Amaechi, four years removed from life in the NBA, came out of the closet last week, becoming part of the most ridiculous statistic in sports. He is the sixth male athlete from a major pro league ever to say publicly that he is gay. Six of those six, a profoundly imperfect 100 percent, waited until after retirement to reveal the truth about themselves."
"If Amaechi really wanted to be the pioneer he envisions, he would have written the book and outed himself while he was still playing basketball," Doug Robinson wrote in Deseret Morning News.
Amaechi however says he hopes to make a difference to people and promote the importance of living openly and honestly.
"Living more openly in the later years of my NBA career was one of the things that radically changed my life. It made me happier. I want to spread my influence in the same way that I was able to because I had a basketball in my hand. I hope now to have perhaps a different lectern to stand behind but with an equally important message."
As spokesperson for the HRC's coming out project, Amaechi will promote the importance of being out and living openly and honestly while traveling around the country to promote his autobiography. He also has set up a blog with HRC at www.hrc.org/amaechi that will allow people to share their coming out stories.