"I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay," declared NBA player Jason Collins in a personal essay published in Sports Illustrated on Monday. With those words Collins became the first male athlete in a major professional sport to openly come out as gay.

Sports Illustrated published the story at 11am EST on Monday. Within minutes there were messages of support, messages fueled with hate and everything else in between. Literally, and everything else in between: One fellow NBA player even told his 80,000 Twitter followers that he didn’t mind Collins’ coming out, he was just bothered with what he called the "I’m black buffer."

Still the homophobic messages were drowned out pretty quickly. Collins immediately drew support for his announcement from the White House — President Obama called him — along with former President Clinton, the NBA, current and former teammates, a sponsor, and athletes in other sports.

Checkout some of the messages of love (and hate) for Collins below:

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