Australian football’s only openly gay player speaks about coming out and why he’s running for the Greens in the next federal election
The story of Jason Ball’s coming out is not one story but hundreds of stories. As the first – and to date only – Australian rules footballer to come out as gay, his story has multiple layers that add up to him now being within striking distance of taking the Liberals’ blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins for the Greens at the next federal election.
His story starts in his family home at Christmas Hills in one of the tall eucalyptus forests that border Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs. He grew up knowing what it was to see wombats and echidnas in the wild. He was fascinated by the prehistory of Australia – he says that reading, as a child, of the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger “broke my heart”. He visualised the dinosaurs that once walked the earth. Now 30, he says: “I grew up in a wonderland.”
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