PHILADELPHIA--Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson showed remarkable courage on Sunday night when he performed an openly gay touchdown dance after catching a long bomb in the third quarter. Jackson later admitted that the dance was meant as a “statement.”

“I wanted to make a statement about myself and who I am as a person,” said Jackson, who had six catches for 176 yards. “I’ve been living a lie for too long. That was just my way of saying, ‘This is me. This is DeSean. I'm here, I'm queer, and I’m not going to be afraid anymore.’ I think I got that message across. Judging from the amount of hate mail I received, I definitely did.”

The dance came late in the third quarter with the Eagles down 31-30. Jackson caught a 60-yard-pass from McNabb and back pedaled into the end zone, where he proceeded to perform a choreographed dance routine. A few quick steps, a hip thrust, and some effeminate hand gestures later, DeSean Jackson was no longer living a lie.

“It’s a relief, really,” said Jackson. “I really didn’t want to hold some press conference and make a formal announcement, so I came up with this idea instead. I actually think it was a pretty damn good dance. It gave me some ideas for other dances. Wait until you see what I come up with for next week. It's going to be so gay that Michael Crabtree will recoil in horror from it.”

Eagles coach Andy Reid, who has grown close with Jackson over the past season, said he supported Jackson’s decision and hoped it would inspire more players to show similar courage.

“DeSean’s a real gamer,” Reid said. “He’s got a lot of courage. I was totally supportive of him when he told me he was going to do this. I actually helped him out with his dance. Get this: He was concerned it wasn't gay enough. Ha! Can you believe that? I told him it was the gayest thing I'd seen since I went to that John Mayer concert last summer.”

Gay rights activists applauded Jackson for his decision, but criticized the manner in which he made the announcement.

“It's nice that the guy had the courage to come out of the closet,” said Paul David of the Gay Rights Alliance, “but a simple announcement would have been fine. Instead he did some flaming dance that made him look like an attention-starved asshole. Actually, he is an attention-starved asshole so I guess it was appropriate. And now he's one of us. Great. Maybe we should stop encouraging professional athletes to come out of the closet.”

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