First Openly Gay Professional Basketball Player in Argentina Comes Out

Argentina has its first ever openly gay professional basketball player!

Sebastián Vega shared his truth with the world in a lengthy post in Spanish on social media last week titled “the truth sets us free.”

In the post, he goes into detail about what a difficult journey he had accepting himself as gay, something he later echoed in an interview with Reuters.

“When I started to feel attracted to a man, I had a very bad time,” he said. “I felt shame, guilt, a lot of rejection, but at the same time the desire to be with someone.”

But coming out brought Vega the same feeling it brings so many people who are scared or nervous to embrace who they really are — “I felt truly free: it had been a long time since I’d walked without such a heavy weight on my shoulders.”

Many athletes who come out as LGBTQ express a fear that their teammates or other people in the sport will reject them. And in Vega’s case, he told Reuters that it wasn’t uncommon to hear fellow players use homophobic slurs before he came out.

But now that he’s out, he says his fellow Gimnasia de Comodoro club players have been supportive, and in some cases, have even apologized for past remarks.

“The most beautiful thing of all is that nothing has changed — on the contrary, it has changed for the better,” he said.

“If I had [come out] five or six years ago, I don’t know if society would have been ready. People are becoming more aware.”

Vega hopes that the more athletes come out, the more the stigma still associated with it will change.