PHOTOS: An Appreciation Of The Courageous Ordinariness Of Robbie Rogers

There’s been a lot of chatter lately, and some disappointment, about the fact that we can’t choose who’s going to be the poster boy for Big League Gay Athlete. It’s as if the person should be someone on the order of Peyton Manning to make the biggest splash. Who cares, the logic goes, about an NBA free agent nearing the end of his career or a retired and then rehired soccer player. As if soccer is even a real American sport! Yet it’s just that kind of ordinary bravery of a few individuals with their own particular motivations and timetables that makes this phenomenal out-in-sports moment so radical and awe- inspiring. With each new “revelation,” being gay and playing sports becomes a little less of a contradiction in the public mind, perhaps a small step for human kind but a huge step for the homo kind. So Robbie Rogers is not Tim Tebow (he’s actually better at soccer than Tebow, a horrid quarterback with a weak arm, is at football). He’s not Tom Brady. He’s about a foot shorter than LeBron James. He’s a relatively well-known professional soccer player who had the courage to tell the world the truth, before almost anyone else at his level of athletic accomplishment. We browsed his Facebook page, and fell in love with his sweet and cute ordinariness. That’s a pretty damn good reasons for him to be one of the elite guys sharing the glow of this moment in history. Browse through the pics of Robbie…