In an interview with The Nation’s sports editor Dave Zirin, Saints linebacker Scott Fujita has taken an unusual stance for an NFL player: openly stating his support for same-sex marriage.

Zirin’s story, “Can the NFL Tackle Homophobia?,” includes quotes from a Huffington Post essay by Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who wrote:

If Britney Spears can party it up in Vegas with one of her boys and go get married on a whim and annul her marriage the next day, why can’t a loving same sex couple tie the knot … But now here in 2009 same sex marriages are prohibited. I think we will look back in 10, 20, 30 years and be amazed that gays and lesbians did not have the same rights as every one else.

Fujita agrees:

I hope he’s right in his prediction, and I hope even more that it doesn’t take that long. People could look at this issue without blinders on…the blinders imposed by their church, their parents, their friends or, in our case, their coaches and locker rooms. I wish they would realize that it’s not a religion issue. It’s not a government issue. It’s not even a gay/straight issue or a question of your manhood. It’s a human issue. And until more people see that, we’re stuck arguing with people who don’t have an argument.

Fujita has spoken out on other social topics before, including Japanese-American interment during World War II (his grandmother, Lillie Fujita, was forced to relocate to a government camp in Arizona in the 1940s). In a 2006 interview with ESPN.com, Fujita said, “Any prejudice has to be unacceptable.”

Zirin reports that Fujita has endorsed the Oct. 11 National Equality March in Washington, D.C., and concludes, “When athletes like Fujita and Ayanbadejo speak out against homophobia, they are not only challenging the status quo but redefining a warped vision of manhood in the process.”