Australian basketball player Issac Humphries has come out as gay in a speech to his team Melbourne United. Humphries is the only active basketball professional in a major league who has come out.
“This is probably going to be the hardest conversation I’ve ever had to have in my life,” Australian basketball pro Issac Humphries said in the video, which he shared on social media and has since garnered millions of views. “But life is about doing and learning from difficult things and making a change through the tough times,” he continues.
Humphries sat in a chair in front of his Melbourne United team-mates and spoke to them for almost three minutes. A few years ago he fell into a “very dark place, very lonely place”. “I tried to take my own life. The main reason I got to this point was struggling with my sexuality. I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m gay. I hated myself for it. I was from disgusted with myself. I couldn’t imagine being that kind of person in basketball.”
Issac Humphries came into a community that empowered him
But then he got into an environment where you were very proud and happy and had a lot of fun. In between, Humphries fights back tears in the video. “It was a wake-up call for me,” he says. That’s when he decided that he no longer wanted to hide and that he wanted to go public when he switched to a new team. Humphries sees professional athletes as role models. All over the world there are people like him who are hiding, and he wants to be a role model for these people. You should be anything you want: “You can be a great basketball player and be gay.”
At the end of his short speech, his teammates applaud and hug him a lot. His club supports the professional in his coming out and found many words of praise. In a longer article for the US broadcaster CNN, Humphries explained his career in more detail and describes how he came to his courageous decision, which was preceded by a year-long struggle with himself.
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