"I'm gonna put your backfield in motion!"
Posted on 04/19/2005 1:27:46 PM PDT by real saxophonist
Gay football player talks about his life
Jesse Fanciulli
April 19, 2005
Esera Tuaolo isn't the man you might expect.
He weighs 310 pounds, and says he feels light as a feather.
He spent nine years as a defensive lineman in the manly-man world of the National Football League. And he's gay.
Tuaolo spent most of his life trying to be the man everyone expected: The man who laughed at fag jokes in the locker room and bedded women he met at bars.
"I made sure my teammates saw me kissing women and going home with them," Tuaolo told an audience of about 40 people who gathered to hear him speak Monday night at the University of Northern Colorado.
Tuaolo was apparently as good at acting as he was on the field.
None of his teammates with the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Jacksonville Jaguars, Carolina Panthers or Atlanta Falcons knew Tuaolo was gay until he came out of the closet in 2002 after retirement.
The revelation cost him friendships with many of his former teammates, but being honest about his sexuality lifted a huge burden from Tuaolo's broad shoulders.
Tuaolo learned early in life that being openly gay was dangerous. He remembers seeing one of his childhood acquaintances throwing rocks at another boy, calling him a fag, queer and homosexual.
That was the day Tuaolo decided to keep his sexuality a secret.
"That's when I started to be an actor," he said at UNC. The decision to hide who he is might have been a wise one from an educational and professional standpoint.
As the youngest child in a poor family of banana farmers in Hawaii, Tuaolo was the first in his family to attend college, thanks to a football scholarship. Later, he would find success as a professional football player.
Tuaolo is convinced that his NFL teammates would have shunned him if he revealed his sexual identity -- so he took great pains to live a secret life.
He said numbed the fear of being discovered as gay with alcohol and was deeply depressed. It was not until after he retired that Tuaolo made the decision to come out. He had adopted two children with his partner Mitchell and wanted his children to know that families came in many combinations, and that it's OK to have two daddies.
"My life now is just beautiful," he said.
Tuaolo is an inspiration for UNC Noah Slauson, 22, who saw the former NFL player on the cover of a gay magazine: "I grew up in an era when I never imagined I could look up to a professional athlete."
Tuaolo spoke at UNC on behalf of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender organization.
Ick.
"I'm gonna put your backfield in motion!"
A man who beds women is NOT gay. He's bisexual.
Must have been growing up on the banana farm that got to him.
Dude sang the national anthem like a chickadee. Plenty of people had their suspicions about him long before he decided to begin a speechmaking business.
Looks like a receiver
The joke that ends with "block that punt, block that punt!" come to mind here.
A horny queer is a better description.
I didn't want to know this.
So someone said, would pole smoking be banned, too...
I bet Jeff Garcia is glad to hear about this.
Tight end?
"None of his teammates with the Green Bay Packers knew..."
And none of the fans CARED because you were a worthless bum of a player! We were glad to see you go!
One other comment: He spoke before a basically hand-picked Gay-Bi-Lesbian-Assorted Freak audience of only 40 at a college in CO? Hmmm...guess he was too much of a Girly Man to hold a similar conference like this in, say, a team locker room with the media and his fellow players after a game?
What a poser. People that are phonies and liars in any part of their lives are phonies and liars in all parts of their lives.
Just another pro-athlete fornicator.....and I seriously doubt his "life is just beautiful."
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
I'm sorry, but I'm tired of stories about the wonderfulness of Gayness...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.