Andrew McIntosh thought about suicide so often as a college athlete that he had his own funeral played out in his head. Dying somehow seemed easier than telling his truth.
“It was emotional chaos,” he tells USA TODAY Sports. “The perception, based on fear, tells you that coming out is worse than death.”
This was in 2009, when McIntosh played lacrosse at Oneonta State in central New York. He remembers the day he heard a teammate utter a homophobic slur — that drill is so gay — that seemed all the more hurtful for its casual, offhand nature.