It Takes Balls: TitanMen Exclusive Jesse Jackman Steps Up to the Plate in Emotional Interview
To coincide with the film’s release, co-writer and star Jesse Jackman — who plays A.J. — recorded a three-minute video (posted here) sharing his real-life experiences as a once-closeted gay athlete. He hopes that his personal story will inspire closeted gay and lesbian athletes to find courage within themselves, and to seek out gay and gay-friendly peers who share the same passion.
“When I was growing up, I never really fit in,” says Jesse. “I liked sports, but I never felt like I could play them and be comfortable in my own skin… but when I was in my early 20s I found a gay ice hockey league. The level of companionship and camaraderie was just absolutely remarkable.”
Jesse, who has also played in gay rugby and flag football leagues, goes on to encourage gay and lesbian athletes to join LGBT-friendly clubs in their area. “There’s hope out there,” he concludes. “You don’t have to be good, as long as you’re out there having fun. It changed my life and it’ll change yours.”
For Closeted Gay Athletes, Endorsement Fears Persist
by Jesse Jackman
(This article originally ran in the Huffington Post’s Queer Voices section on February 19, 2024.)
In the wake of Manny Pacquiao’s disparaging comments about gays and lesbians during a recent television interview, Nike stopped selling all of its Pacquiao-branded merchandise and terminated the boxer’s endorsement contract. The move, which earned widespread praise from LGBT activists and personalities, showed that Nike will not tolerate discrimination against the LGBT community. It’s a decision that even Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, agrees with. “Why would [Nike] want to offend the gay and lesbian community?” said Arum, who has represented the Pilipino boxer-turned-politician since 2005. “They sell product to everyone.”
There is a fear among gay professional athletes, however, that some sponsors’ support of the LGBT community may not be as reliable.
Gus Kenworthy, a 24-year-old Olympic freestyle skier, publicly revealed his sexuality in the October 2015 edition of ESPN The Magazine. He returned from Sochi with a silver medal, corporate sponsorships, and newfound fame, due in part to his efforts to rescue five stray dogs from the Russian city’s streets. Kenworthy secretly worried, though, that coming out would leave him with nothing more than “a heavy piece of silver.”
“I was kind of in this in-between where I wasn’t ready to go forward with the authentic me and be who I am,” he told ESPN. “For the longest time I didn’t think I was going to tell anybody. I was so scared of what people would think.”
Gus Kenworthy on the cover of ESPN The Magazine
“I didn’t want to do something that would tarnish my image,” he would later tell Rolling Stone, which refers to him as the first openly gay action-sports star. “Maybe my sponsors wouldn’t want to put my face on something.”
Out soccer star Megan Rapinoe, a member of the 2015 World Cup champion U.S. women’s soccer team, says that many gay athletes share Kenworthy’s fear. “It is an issue, definitely,” Rapinoe told ESPN The Magazine as part of a special report on coming out in the post-acceptance era. “Some athletes have this image to uphold and may feel like sponsors won’t want them if they’re gay. I hope that would never go through [sponsors’] minds, but I think it does.”
“Everywhere I look someone is getting a deal and on a commercial and sponsored by something, which is amazing,” Rapinoe added. “But with that comes the pressure of looking a certain way and having a certain message. Maybe they wouldn’t discriminate, but you don’t know that for sure if you’re a player and unsure whether to come out. Otherwise, why wouldn’t more people come out?”
Fortunately for Rapinoe, Nike is one of her backers, and Nike’s LGBT-friendly image goes far beyond just dropping the contracts of anti-gay athletes like Pacquiao. In addition to sponsoring other out professional athletes like Kenworthy, the NBA’s Jason Collins, and the WNBA’s Brittney Griner, the company earned a perfect rating in the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC’s) Corporate Equality Index, and hosted the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Sports Summit in 2012. At the summit, USC marketing professor Ira Kalb affirmed that Nike’s show of support has financial benefits for the company as well, stating that the LGBT community “is very loyal, they buy products from companies with equal opportunity in the workplace, and they pay attention to the news.”
Megan Rapinoe appears in a Nike ad entitled Always On
Since coming out, Rapinoe and Kenworthy have taken personal steps forward as well. Besides retaining their high-profile endorsements, they’ve become willing role models for the LGBT athlete community. Rapinoe is now an ambassador for Athlete Ally, a nonprofit organization that focuses on ending homophobia and transphobia in sports. For Kenworthy, the new role is a responsibility he similarly embraces, and he tries to answer everyone who reaches out to him. “I struggled for a long time,” he explained to Rolling Stone in a follow-up article, “and if I had someone to look up to who had broken through, it would have been great.”
While the cases of Rapinoe and Kenworthy have proven the viability of high-profile endorsements for LGBT athletes — their sponsors have demonstrated their faithfulness in a profound way — a quiet yet persistent fear remains among the gay athlete community that other companies may not be so supportive. This may partly account for why there are currently no out players at the highest level of America’s “big four” professional leagues (the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB), and so few elsewhere. But with companies like Adidas and Nike helping to alleviate the financial risk of coming out, and athletes like Rapinoe and Kenworthy leading the way, professional gay sports figures may start to feel more comfortable stepping out of the shadows and into the national spotlight.
Author’s Note: This article originally ran in the Queer Voices section of The Huffington Post on February 19, 2024. It’s intended to build on the argument I made during the interview portion of Out! in which I discuss potential explanations for why there aren’t more out gay athletes. I’d like to thank author Kaye P. Hallows for giving me a copy of ESPN The Magazine‘s special report on gay athletes, and (as always) my friend Stephen Laifer for editing my article into something halfway readable. Be sure to check out Kaye’s author page on Amazon, and if you’re ever in need of a kick-ass copy editor, you can find Stephen on Facebook. —Jesse