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legionseagle retweeted this article, noting that anybody who’s been used as an unwitting beard would probably be less judgmental. To summarize, NBA basketballer Jason Collins recently came out. His former fiancee Carolyn Moos gave an interview to a women’s magazine in which she talked about how hurt she’d felt when Collins ended their relationship, and also when she found out he was actually gay.

I see this from a couple of different angles. Being queer myself, obviously I empathize with Collins. It can be very hard to come to terms with your sexuality. I myself didn’t come to terms with it until I was 26 or 27. I don’t think there’s any graceful way to come out. I highly doubt Collins woke up one morning and went, “Now, how can I ruin this woman’s life?” He was probably as miserable as she was. Actually, he was probably even more miserable, because being in the closet really sucks. And hopefully there will be fewer of these situations in future if societal homophobia continues to decrease at current rates. Meaning that hopefully more people will feel able to come out earlier in their lives, before they’ve gotten into long-term opposite-sex relationships that can never make either them or their partner happy.

However, I know of several situations where a man was married to a straight woman, finally came to terms with his sexuality, and ended the marriage, and it invariably ended messily. Divorce is messy almost by definition. Add in a big lie (yeah, the man in question has probably been lying to himself, but he’s probably also been lying to her) and it gets messier. Add in potential infidelity, and it gets messier still. Granted, not all “I’m actually not straight, and I’m leaving you” revelations necessarily involve infidelity, but many do. ( Read more... )

All that said, I’m not sure giving a tell-all interview to Cosmopolitan magazine is the *wisest* way to get over a broken heart. Journalists and editors aren’t therapists or friends, they’re in the business of selling content. Maybe she figures by publicizing her side of the story, she’ll achieve emotional closure. Personally, I wouldn’t want a bunch of strangers reading about how my ex-fiance screwed up my life, and either feeling sorry for me, or criticizing me for enabling homophobia. But, you know, to each their own, and at least she didn’t give the article to the Daily Fail. But I don’t think Slate is being entirely fair to Moos. In fact, the Slate article strays close to, “don’t harsh my squee over this historic first by bringing messy reality into it.”