Retired NBA center Jason Collins, the first out gay man to play in one of the four major North American leagues, is finally married. His ceremony was in late May, a few yards away from the Lake Austin shore in Texas. He and film producer Brunson Green have basically been together since Collins made history back in 2014. However, now that the two of them are legal, married folks like me will finally stop asking them “Why aren’t you married?”
“You know, we’re getting older,” the 46-year-old Collins told me after the wedding, “and there are advantages. When you’re a married couple — especially in the case, God forbid, something happens in a medical emergency or when we’re traveling — there are just all of these protections of being married. And if there’s a Supreme Court decision that reverses gay marriage and it’s up to the states … we wanted to be able get married where we live first. There are a lot of factors that went into it but simply … we chose to get married on our terms.”
It’s been nearly a decade — June 26, 2015 — since the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage across the land. If that feels like bedrock, it shouldn’t. Remember, that was way back when a 50-year-old Supreme Court ruling guaranteed the right to an abortion across the land. That was back when Elon Musk — with an estimated net worth of $13.2 billion — was barely among the top 100 richest people in the world. That was back when few inside the Washington Beltway took the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency seriously.
Now we have members of Congress comparing him to Jesus.
Needless to say, a lot can change over a decade.
However, what has not changed is Collins’ unique place in NBA history. The former All-American from Stanford, who went on to be the starting center in the NBA Finals twice, remains the only person to have been an active player while out.
“There are other NBA players who I am aware of that are members of the LGBTQ+ community but don’t identify fully,” Collins told me. “There are those that l’ve had conversations with, but they are not ready to step forward for whatever reason in 2025. Is there something keeping them from coming out? You know everyone’s on their own schedule. … I don’t have a simple answer there, but I definitely know that l’m not the only one.”
The fact that we still have closeted professional athletes should come as no surprise given the political and cultural touchstones that sexual orientation and gender identity remain in our society. As much as we want to rush to a “who cares” response when a person of note comes out of the closet, the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ bills today and in recent years across this country tells you that a lot of people care.
That’s why we all — like Collins and his husband — should remember that marriage is a fragile and hard-won right. The justices’ ruling in June 2015 did not end prejudice against same-sex couples any more than Loving vs. Virginia made interracial relationships a moot point in June 1967.
As Carl Jung famously said, “The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Lawmakers in at least nine states have recently introduced measures to undermine same-sex marriage. That would include my home state of Michigan, where my husband and I were married. In fact, we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary the same week as Collins’ wedding. Whether our legal marriage makes it a decade has nothing to do with the love we have for each other.
That’s the tragic reality of having your humanity used for political theater and your rights up for grabs each election cycle. When Collins entered the NBA in 2001, nearly 60% of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, according to Pew Research. Today, more than 60% support it — including 44% of Republicans.
Even though marriage equality has been the law of the land for nearly a decade, it has constantly been under assault because it’s red meat on the campaign trail.
This conversation isn’t about right or wrong. As Jung said, this is between sense and nonsense. Marrying your longtime love, as Collins did, makes all the sense in the world. Marrying out of fear of losing that right — in America in 2025 — is understandable … and yet makes no sense at all.
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