Professional sport finally enters the 21st century Jason Collins, right, has won the support of the basketball establishment Coming out as gay was a giant step for the seven-foot-tall American basketball player Jason Collins. But it was an even bigger step for sport. No active player in major-league American male team sports, or in top-division male soccer anywhere on earth, had previously done it. Other athletes may now follow Collins's lead, but only if sporting authorities help. Male sport is the last secular bastion of homophobia. It fears homosexuality, probably in part because many of its rituals look homosexual: shared showers, veneration of same-sex bodies, hugs after scoring and fans singing of their love for players. To admit the possibility of homosexuality would strip this world of its innocence. And so changing rooms traditionally echo with accounts of heterosexual sex and taunts of "faggot." In this environment, wife beaters probably felt more accepted than gays. Many athletic gay teenagers have ended up choosing other pursuits. Athletes must feel comfortable performing before crowds. They cannot if they are worried about homophobia. You have to be 100 per cent in the moment . . . I played many years of 90 per cent in the moment and 10 per cent listening to the crowd," said Gareth Thomas, the Welsh rugby player who finally came out in 2009. That Collins became a trailblazer has to do with his background. While, like many US athletes he is a black Christian (generally not a gay-friendly group), he is also possibly the most upper-middle-class man in professional basketball. After private school in Los Angeles, he went to Stanford University where Chelsea Clinton was a friend. He first came out to his aunt, a judge. Her response: "I've known you were gay for years." Educated people tend to be most tolerant of homosexuality. Gay athletes from humbler families may find less support. But Collins has found support in basketball. The handful of male team athletes who came out before (starting with Australian rugby-league player Ian Roberts in 1995) received similar acceptance from colleagues. When cricketer Steven Davies came out to his England teammates in 2010, they supported him. His rival wicketkeeper, Matt Prior, even rebuked him for not having told him before. This acceptance is partly because today's athletes belong to a gay-friendly generation. But it also has to do with the ideology of sport: what matters are results. Even bigots care about performance. If you help the team win, few will care who you sleep with. Mark Gevisser, an Open Society Foundation fellow researching gay issues, explains: "People come out in societies that are about performance and productivity." That's why market economies tend to be gay-friendly. Still, gay players can expect intolerance from some teammates, opponents and spectators. Pro sport must therefore crack down on homophobia. The model should be its struggle against racism. The sufferings of Jackie Robinson, in 1947 the first black player in US major-league baseball, fill the new biopic 42 . In one scene, an opposing manager intones "Nigger, nigger, nigger" while Robinson is at bat. Nowadays leagues punish racism. That model is being extended to homophobia: after Antonio Cassano, an Italian footballer, said last summer, "Queers in the national team? I hope not," Europe's soccer federation Uefa fined him. US sports authorities, expecting more gay players to come out, are now warning teams that they cannot ask potential recruits if they like women. These efforts should encourage gay athletes. Robbie Rogers, a former US international soccer player who retired after coming out in February, is considering a comeback. Moreover, a generation of teenage gay athletes who came out young is approaching. And endorsements from companies chasing the "pink dollar" may help. In this past year of gay liberation, the most moving story I have heard was from a friend who finally dared announce her lesbianism in middle age. The response from her peers: deafening silence. Nobody cared. One day a sportsman will come out and it won't trend on Twitter.