Michael Sam’s Dad: ‘I Don’t Want My Grandkids Raised In That Kind Of Environment’

var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Michael Sam made headlines when he told the world he is gay, but when he told his father — just five days before the Times published their interview — it didn’t go well. His father is still struggling.

Sam is likely to become the first open-gay NFL draft pick. He told his father he’s gay via a text message. His dad was having breakfast at a Denny’s in their hometown of Hitchcock, Texas.

“I couldn’t eat no more, so I went to Applebee’s to have drinks,” Michael Sam, Sr. told the New York Times. “I don’t want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment.”

“I’m old school,” he says. “I’m a man-and-a-woman type of guy.”

The Times writes that Sam Sr. is so “old school” that to prove it, “he pointed out that he had taken an older son to Mexico to lose his virginity.”

And while he hopes Michael Sam, Jr. gets into the NFL, “he expressed discomfort at the very idea of a gay N.F.L. player, even if the player was his son.”

He grumbled that Deacon Jones, the Hall of Fame defensive end renowned for his toughness, “is turning over in his grave.”

Someone should tell Sam, Sr. that his son and many other gay people can be just as “tough,” and that being gay doesn’t mean being weak. As his own son clearly has demonstrated.

Regardless, Michael Sam, Jr. is proud of his family, despite their tremendous challenges and adversity.

A sister drowned when she was 2, before Michael was born, when another child accidentally knocked her off a fishing pier. Another brother, Russell, was 15 when he was shot and killed trying to break into a home, in what his father said was part of a gang initiation. Another brother, Julian, has not been heard from since he left for work one day in 1998; his family believes he is dead. Two others are in jail.

“It was very hard growing up in that environment,” Michael Sam told the Times. “My family was very notorious in the town that we lived in. Everyone would say, ‘There goes those damn Sams.’ I didn’t want to paint that ill picture of me. I knew the good in my family. They didn’t know our background and the adversity we had to endure. I wanted to succeed and be a beacon of hope in my family.”

 

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Screenshot via Times video