Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, in for Tanzina Vega. Take a listen.

Carl Nassib: What's up people. I'm Carl Nassib. I'm at my house here, in Westchester, Pennsylvania. I just want to take a quick moment to say that I'm gay. I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but I finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest.

Melissa: Well, you're listening to Carl Nassib making history. Because with this personal Instagram post on Monday afternoon, the Las Vegas Raiders defensive end became the first active NFL player to announce he is gay. Joining me now to talk about this moment and why it matters is Wade Davis. Wade's a former NFL player, and he currently consults multiple corporations across tech, and entertainment, and sports, and-- thank you for being here, Wade.

Wade Davis: Thank you for having me. It's always a privilege to be in conversation with you, Melissa.

Melissa: When I heard this news, I thought, “Wait a minute, Wade and I have basically been talking about the challenges of being openly gay in men's professional sports for like-- going on a decade.” Wade, you came out in 2012, after the end of your playing days, which was extraordinarily courageous in that moment. Also, talk to me about what it is about Nassib being actively in the league that makes this moment something that builds on what you did?

Wade: I've been thinking about this question for a while, and part of it is, I think it's a forcing function to ensure that players, that owners, that coaches, that executives have a different level of fluency in being able to talk about what it means to be lesbian, bisexual, gay, trans, non-binary. There is now an expectation that they can do this relatively well. That they also can talk about what it means to sit at the intersection of multiple identities also. Because I'm a believer-- as you have taught me-- that the root of homophobia is sexism.

You can't have a conversation about what it means to have an active gay player in the NFL without also-- we’re really trying to nuance the conversation and say, what are the learnings that we can take from his announcement? What are the languages? What are the things that we need to be better at and that must be inclusive of gender and sexism, also?

Melissa: Part of what was heartwarming about this moment, is that Carl is able to say, “I have a wonderful family, I have the support, I have this community around me,” basically. It took me back to 2014, when you and I talked about Michael Sam. Michael Sam as a Black player coming out of poverty, out of a very challenging family situation that for him, gay identity wasn't exclusively about sexuality. It was also about the intersections of that economic disprivilege, and race.

Wade: I don't think that people understand the debt that we owe to Michael Sam. Michael Sam, in my opinion, is a revolutionary in every sense of the word. Michael Sam literally gave up his football future in a way that allows someone like Carl to stand on his shoulders. Michael will probably never get the credit that he is due for cracking open not just a sports institution but other institutions to say that, “The performance of these ideas of macho aren't what we should aspire towards.” If you think about-- to your point, Carl now will be held as something great as he should be, but what did we miss?

What was the conversation that we should have had about Michael Sam, when someone like Michael sits at the intersection of class, of race, and of sexual orientation? I hope that the media is much more sophisticated now that they can see Carl as a football player who is also gay, and not someone who is gay and a football player first, because that distinction is really important. As you know, most kids who identify as L, G, and B, don't start to understand their sexuality until somewhat later. I'm sure that Carl, myself, and others knew that we wanted to play sports from a very early age, so our identity as an athlete often is formed prior to our identity as LGB.

Melissa: Talk about that, just a bit more for me, because, as part of his announcement, Nassib said, “Representation matters.” I was thinking about this and the work that you did with the You Can Play project. I love this language, it's really helpful to think about young people knowing first, “I'm in the little league,” or, “I know for sure I want to play football,” or basketball, or whatever it is, and only later maybe-- as it is for queer and straight kids-- having that sense of what sexual identity might be like, or might be within that context of already having an identity shaped as an athlete.

When you talk with young people, when you work with young people, what are some of the lingering challenges that queer young folk face as they engage in organized sport?

Wade: One of the largest ones is the perpetuation of this myth that there is one way to be a man or a boy. There are these scripts, there are these ways that little boys specifically are forced to show up and to grow up much earlier. You start to hear language like “little man” or just language that doesn't allow kids to be kids. There was also a demand for certain type of toughness. That you cannot express any emotions, that pain is something to be overcome and not expressed. The other thing with the language that we use-- so probably about 10 years ago, a friend of ours-- his name is Darnell Moore-- he coined the term “inviting in”.

Which is a really important distinction and changes the way that we think about like what the demand is of LGBTQ+ folks. Because the language of coming out, it connotes that we actually have some work to do. The language of inviting in shifts the paradigm and says, “Hey, you heterosexual-identified folks, you have created a society that harms, that terrorizes folks who don't fit a certain idea. Therefore, you have work to actually do before we invite you in into what's happening in our mental mind state. When you do that work, then we give you the gift of understanding what's happening to us, and you also can learn a lot from us."

I think the hardest part for heterosexual folks is to see themselves in us, is to see our strength, our brilliance, to see past just our sexual orientation. That shift also is something that we have to continue to push this conversation to have, beyond just the idea that sports is a space, where folks who don't fit this macho paradigm can't succeed and thrive in.

Melissa: It's such a beautiful reminder. For listeners who are not familiar with his work, I am going to just do a little book suggestion here and suggest that you go out and get Darnell Morris, No Ashes in the Fire. In part because it is written in a way that invites in and has that kind of core empathetic aspect that is part of what makes Darnell just a lovely person to always be around. Let's dig in on that just a little bit more. Because given your years of leadership in this area, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the wave of state legislation this year, the sought to ban trans youth from sports participation.

You've been helping us think a little bit about how it might be more of an adolescent moment for many gay young people, but trans youth often know very early on, have a lot of clarity about their identity. What would you say to those young people whose families or themselves feel harmed by the public discourse surrounding these efforts to pass these laws?

Wade: To anyone who identifies as trans and non-binary, the work to do is not to try to convince anyone else of your humanity. Your work is to continue to love and to step into your own truth and not feel a demand to explain, to prove anything to anyone else. The work that I would say for heterosexual folks is to realize that you are always having a gender identity conversation. I was literally having a conversation with a friend of mine who was saying that his daughter, who was nine, probably he didn't think was ready to have a conversation about gender identity.

I said, “Well, do you call your child she?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Do you call your child daughter?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, you're already having a conversation about gender identity. The problem is that there's a certain conversation that you're more comfortable having and one that you're not.” We've got to continually hold up the mirror to our non-trans and non-NB folks to say, “Hey, you're already having these conversations, but your discomfort is having a conversation that doesn't allow me or folks who identify as LGBTQ+ to be at the same level and to be seen just like you.”

Melissa: It did feel to me-- if we go on back to Carl here-- his decision didn't seem like it was a surprise to his team or to the league, which suggests to me that there were some professional conversations he likely had before posting that video. How would you rate how the league did in its response to him?

Wade: To be very honest, I haven't had a chance to see all of the responses from the NFL. What I will say is that the NFL has a larger responsibility not just in the LGBTQ space, but in the social justice space, to continually realize that they oftentimes reflect what's happening in our larger society, but they also have an outsized impact on how we see ourselves. I would say that the league has a responsibility to figure out, how do you get more non-LGBTQ players to continually use their platform, to advocate on behalf of those who don't have the same level of attention and/or advocacy.

What does it look like to have owners who have lots of power? Who have lots of access to start to fight on behalf of individuals who identify as LGBT, as you said earlier, to push back on some of these really awful, dehumanizing laws that are specifically targeting trans folks.

Melissa: Wade A. Davis is a consultant leadership coach and former NFL player and, as you can hear it, just one of my most thoughtful and fabulous humans in my life. Thank you for joining The Takeaway, Wade.

Wade: Thank you for having me, and I can't wait to hug you soon.

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