I am me & I am FREE

To be honest I’ve been thinking about it for a while, trying to find a time that works, now leading up to the Olympics, people want to get personal stories. Our team in general is in a position where people look up to us and kids look up to us. I embrace that and I think I have a huge LGBT following. I think it’s pretty cool, the opportunity that I have, especially in sports. There’s really not that many out athletes. It’s important to be out and to live my life that way.

It’s about breaking those barriers of you know, maybe you are homophobic a little bit, but then you see me and you’ve always loved me and you’ve always loved my personality and loved the way that I play and your kids love me. Then you start to realize, “oh, well, okay.” I don’t think I’ve ever really felt direct homophobia right at me or in my face but there’s so many people that are affected by that and, you know, kids getting kicked out of their homes, people being killed for being gay. And so I think it does take people standing up and saying, “yea, I’m gay,” and it’s okay because you have someone to stand next to you in me.