This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

For years, young gay men have waited for a hero to come out in the sports world to dissuade all of the fears they have about stereotypes and what it means to be gay, for a hero to show them that you can indeed be a healthy and well-adjusted sports playing jock that also happens to be attracted to men. Fortunately, young lesbians have many pro athletes to look up to … golfers, basketball players, tennis players, etc.

And over the years men have had a few examples, including Greg Louganis, who came out just days before he released his autobiography. More recently, former San Diego Padre Billy Bean and Superbowl champion Esera Tuaolo joined the small list of gay professional athletes. While both of them are likeable guys and good role models now, they came out well after they had retired from the sport.

To date, no professional athlete from any of the major sports leagues, including the NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL, have ventured out of the closet during his career. We have no one to call a hero, no one to hold up as a role model.

Well, as they say, be careful what you ask for because you just might get it: This week a “closeted gay athlete” playing in the NHL (National Hockey League) has become the latest pro to find himself at the center of the gay-athlete debate. However, this one appears to have been dragged out of the proverbial closet by the FBI, complete with handcuffs.

This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

The player, Mike Danton of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, has been charged with conspiring to commit a murder. Specifically, he’s accused of hiring a hit man to kill his “roommate” who the FBI is saying was Danton’s boyfriend. When confronted by the “boyfriend” about the botched plot against him, a sobbing Danton said he “felt backed into a corner” and didn’t want his “acquaintance”, as he is referred to in the FBI’s court filings, to leave him and “therefore decided to have him murdered.” (For the full story, check out the sports page in this week’s issue.)

The true nature of Danton and the relationship has yet to be determined, but with federal agents referring to the pair as boyfriends to the media, and with highly emotional statements made by Danton during their telephone confrontation, the story has been widely reported as a gay issue. The actual nature of the relationship or Danton’s sexual orientation may never be revealed, but for the moment members of the gay community are holding their breath wondering, “Is this how our community’s first professional male athlete is going to come out?”

No one really knows how many gay professional athletes there are out there, but it is safe to assume that are some. The thing is, none of these athletes have ever shown the courage to come out while they were in their prime; in fact, most of our examples only prove that hiding in the closet hinders careers.

Bean watched his lover die, and was on the field playing baseball that night, unable to disclose the hurt and pain he felt. His frustration with his closeted life eventually led to his early retirement from the sport. Louganis stayed in an abusive relationship that eventually led to his being infected with HIV, bringing his career to a premature end. Now, Danton’s inability to deal with the stresses of life, which were only compounded by the pressures of the hyper-masculine world of professional hockey, have most likely led to the end of his career and his serving up to 10 years in jail if he is convicted.

Regardless of Danton’s sexual orientation, this story has once again brought gay athletes back into the national spotlight, and not in a good way.

So where do we go from here?

There are a few lessons to learn from this. First, it is quite clear that if he does come out and say that he is gay, Danton is obviously not the role model we are looking for. Danton is an emotionally disturbed young man who has some very difficult issues to deal with. His story serves only to highlight the need for a positive role model to step forward and prove that a gay athlete not only can succeed in sports, but also can be a healthy, well-adjusted individual.

Secondly, how isolated does someone have to be, how far in the closet does someone have to be, to feel that they are better off murdering the person closest to them, than being left alone? How far would someone go to protect his career in professional sports to avoid being outed? Perhaps this illustrates the level of homophobia in sports, where it would be better to be a murderer than to be openly gay.

With all of the advances being made by the GLBT community, it is more important now than ever before that we make sure that progress is being made in the locker room where gay athletes are confronted with homophobia on a daily basis – keeping gay players hidden deeper in a closet where their focus isn’t succeeding in sports, but keeping their sexual orientation a secret. Professional, collegiate and high school sports all need to take steps to change this, and gay athletes need to be assured that they will be treated like one of the guys when they do come out.

Only when this happens will we finally have the hero that we‘ve been looking for.