{"id":74625,"date":"2021-10-18T00:13:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T07:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=74625"},"modified":"2021-10-18T00:13:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T07:13:14","slug":"national-coming-out-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2021\/10\/18\/national-coming-out-day\/","title":{"rendered":"National Coming Out Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can\u2019t believe it.&nbsp; I completely missed <em>National Coming Out Day<\/em>.&nbsp; Not that I typically do much of anything to celebrate.&nbsp; It\u2019s not like I\u2019d chop down a tree, eat a special meal, or dress in a silly costume \u2013 I\u2019m not from Arkansas!&nbsp; No, I usually think about how fortunate I am to live in a time and place where people can be open about their sexual identity.&nbsp; And then have anonymous sex with as many men as possible.&nbsp; What can I say?&nbsp; I\u2019m a romantic.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\" alt=\"colorbar1\" width=\"500\" height=\"1\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It was the day after <em>National Coming Out Day <\/em>that I read about <strong>President Joe Biden <\/strong>condemning anti-gay legislation in various states.&nbsp; That\u2019s how you make progress.&nbsp; Then I read that <strong>Carl Nassib<\/strong>, the openly gay pro football player, said the most important part of coming out was finding that special somebody.&nbsp; See?&nbsp; We have something in common.&nbsp; Last night, I met a dozen special someones \u2013 none that I could identify in a police lineup, but that\u2019s probably for the best.&nbsp; Anyway, Carl said, \u201cI just wanted to be someone\u2019s number one priority, and I couldn\u2019t have that.&nbsp; So that was the one thing where I was like, \u2018Man, I really fucking want that.\u2019&nbsp; But I got that now, so it\u2019s good.&nbsp; Oh, I met an awesome guy.&nbsp; He\u2019s the best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Carl declined to elaborate on who he is dating, but he did reveal that he planned on coming out a year earlier.&nbsp; Blame the delay on that pesky pandemic.&nbsp; While he had some trepidation about telling his story, he said, \u201cEveryone responded so well.&nbsp; I was like, \u2018Damn, these are good dudes!\u2019\u201d&nbsp; Well, not everyone.&nbsp; <strong>Jon Gruden<\/strong>, the head coach of the <em>Las Vegas Raiders <\/em>(the team Carl plays for), sent e-mails containing homophobic, transphobic, racist and misogynistic content between 2011-18 to various <em>NFL <\/em>colleagues.&nbsp; While this was long before his tenure with the Raiders, he was obliged to resign over the revelation.&nbsp; Consequently, Carl took a personal day.&nbsp; \u201cHe just said he\u2019s got a lot to process, there\u2019s a lot that\u2019s been going on the last few days, and of course we support that request,\u201d said the team\u2019s general manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can\u2019t believe it.&nbsp; I completely missed National Coming Out Day.&nbsp; Not that I typically do much of anything to celebrate.&nbsp; It\u2019s not like I\u2019d chop down a tree, eat a special meal, or dress in a silly costume \u2013 I\u2019m not from Arkansas!&nbsp; No, I usually think about how fortunate I am to live<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74637,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74625\/revisions\/74637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}