Rugby star Gareth Thomas in Sports Illustrated: ‘People keep asking, ‘What’s the negative of coming out?’ But there’s none so far.”

It’s wonderful when someone high-profile comes out and a dream come true when the person is as articulate as Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas who talks about his three-year coming out process in a profile just published in Sports Illustrated.

Here’s the part that I found to be the most moving because it’s about what happened to his life after he chose honesty:

“It’s like waking up on Christmas Day, walking down the stairs and seeing Father Christmas,” he says. “The horizons are wide open. I’m like a teenager again. People keep asking, ‘What’s the negative of coming out?’ But there’s none so far. …”

I would love to help kids who are going through this, because we’re all kids. I want to be the gay role model I never had. The note I got from a guy who gave up rugby years ago because he was gay and has returned to playing it since I came out—that outweighs lifting the biggest trophy as captain of Wales.

“The e-mails and letters and Twitters I get tell me there is so much confusion, so many gay kids who love sports but get pushed away. A lot of the notes are from America. I love the United States, … but why wouldn’t the people who run your sports and who sponsor them make a public announcement that they welcome gay people and will support them? Because even if they feel that’s bringing too much attention to something that should be a private matter, at this point that’s what’s needed.”