Last year, Chuck Culpepper, the fine columnist for Sports on Earth, wrote for the first time about being gay. I did a Q/A with Chuck on his decision to write about that part of his personal life.

Now it is a year later, and Jeff Pearlman on his site did a Q/A with Chuck. He talked about the reaction.

By the time I did get to it, any discomfort about it had shrunk to minuscule, and I had just spent a lot of time in Boston with a friend I am so lucky to know, Steve Buckley, Boston sports-media superduperstar. I had ridden with him to Foxboro for the Ravens-Patriots AFC Championship Game, the game that led unexpectedly to the brief conversation with the Ravens’ Brendon Ayanbadejo, which prompted the sudden decision to write the column. Steve had written his similar column in January 2011, and he had stressed to me that he had heard from so many people who said it had helped them. If there was one kid out there who happened upon it and derived even a jot of sustenance from it, then there’s a responsibility to write it, and so on.

Athletes didn’t factor into my decision as much as for Steve. He’s a Boston mainstay in a city he cherishes. I’m a nomad who has ended up living, by chance, in 12 cities since college. He has a marvelous home life, with three chocolate Labrador retrievers he shares with an excellent next-door neighbor. I once traveled so protractedly that in my apartment, a cactus died. He appears regularly amid certain teams. I hopscotch.

He got overwhelmingly positive response as did I. In fact, I’m floored at the bullet-train change in the national feelings on the issue. I never expected to live in this tone of country. I would say the leading complaint you get nowadays is that some are tired of hearing about the issue, but in a free society, we’re all tired of hearing about something. Just for starters, I’m tired of hearing about Justin Bieber.