WATCH: WWE Legend Pat Patterson Comes Out as Gay

[Prophet 451]

35. Sort-of

Wrestling used to be very homophobic (and racist) back in the NWA days. When Vince went national with the WWF, all those prejudices got squashed in service of making money. Vince made it very, very clear to everyone that, if you could draw money for him, he didn't give a damn what you did in your private life. That's had both good and bad effects in that, while it led to Vince turning a blind eye to the rampant drug abuse in his locker room during the Eighties and Nineties, it also meant that gay bashing or hazing his gay stars wouldn't be tolerated.

Pat was retired by the time Vince went national but he's known as the best finish guy in the business (i.e. the guy who helps you plan how the match ends), something which has helped Vince draw hundreds of millions of dollars. Vince also respects toughness and, during his active years, Pat was one of the toughest around.

These days, wrestling has seen the same generational shift as the general public. Polling shows that the younger someone is, the more likely they are to be accepting of gay people. Well, wrestling is very much a young man's game. It's rare for a worker to perform beyond their early Forties and most of the WWE locker room are in their Thirties. The result is that when Chris Kanyon came out, few cared (Kanyon, sadly, killed himself; likely because he was a bipolar sufferer who kept skipping his meds) and when Darren Young came out recently, Vince, Triple H and Stephanie, the three most powerful people in the business, were strongly supportive of him and would probably be pushing (heavily promoting) him if he hadn't gone down with a serious injury fairly soon thereafter.