Gay in Land of the Holy Rollers (the Esera Tuaolo story)

[theHandpuppet]

Terrific excerpt from Tuaolo's book at http://www.outsports.com/nfl/2006/eserabookexcerpt.htm (I also posted this in the Sports Forum.)

Gay in Land of the Holy Rollers
Tuaolo Is Told Hitler Can Be Forgiven
but Not His Brother Who Died of AIDS

By Esera Tuaolo

From "Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL" (with John Rosengren)

Editor's note: Esera Tuaolo created a stir when he came out as gay in 2002 after retiring from a nine-year career in the NFL. In this except from his new book, the story picks up in 1997 when Tuaolo leaves the Minnesota Vikings to join the Jacksonville Jaguars. Tuaolo was still in the closet, but in Minnesota he met his partner, Mitchell, (with whom he is now raising two children).

Jacksonville is the land of Holy Rollers. I have never been anywhere else like that, where religion has taken over the entire city. It extended to the football team. The Jaguars were known as a Christian team. About half of the players were involved in some way with an organization known as Champions for Christ. I had seen Christian groups on other teams, but nothing like this. The CFC members seemed to accept only the guys who attended their weekly bible study. I was my usual Mr. Aloha, always happy-go-lucky in the locker room and able to get along with everyone. But I could feel the tension between the CFC guys and the rest of the players. It was as though you had to choose between two cliques that divided the team.

A lot of the team’s stars belonged to CFC, including Mark Brunell, the quarterback who had upset John Elway and the Denver Broncos in the AFC Central Division playoffs the previous season, and Tony Boselli, an offensive lineman and the first player the franchise drafted. They were the two biggest stars on the team. They really pressured guys, especially the younger players. An older player might start preaching to a younger guy in the locker room that he needed to change his ways because the end was near. You could feel the threat of rejection. Don Davey told me the star players and other CFC members had shunned him because he hadn’t accepted their invitation. It felt like if you didn’t go to their bible study, you weren’t part of the team....

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