The Last Bastion of Homophobia

Nope, it's not the republican party.

The Nation:

A majority of Americans accept gay and lesbian relations. Antidiscrimination and marriage laws are slowly catching up to social consciousness. So why does the world of sports, such a dominant part of our culture, remain fiercely hostile to open participation by LGBT people?

It’s tempting to presume that sports simply reflect the prevailing ideas in society and that athletes and fans make up a particularly homophobic demographic, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. A Sports Illustrated survey among 1,400 pro athletes in the big four sports shows that a solid majority in every league would welcome an openly gay teammate.

SNIP

I asked Pat Griffin, author of Strong Women, Deep Closets, what impact, if any, team owners and advertisers have on professional athletes’ decisions to remain closeted. “Though we have come a ways since Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova lost almost all of their endorsements when they came out, it is still a risk—probably more so for gay male athletes,” Griffin said. “Advertisers and team owners are basically conservative, both socially and politically. They are about the money. That means unless they can figure out a way to make supporting an openly LGBT athlete make money, they aren’t going to risk threatening their brand.”

Despite these cultural obstacles, the once hermetically sealed locker-room closet is slowly cracking open. As with so many liberatory struggles, young people are at the forefront, aided by a few veteran LGBT athletes and advocates.

In March Griffin launched Changing the Game, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, to help LGBT athletes and coaches come out and challenge the persistent homophobia in K–12 sports. Changing the Game is exactly the kind of project that a generation pounding away at the closet door could use to overturn the sports world’s asphyxiating gender norms and homophobia.

The NCAA has banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Another milestone came in May, when the NBA fined basketball great Kobe Bryant $100,000 for calling a referee a “faggot.” It is hard to say whether the decision was prompted by Phoenix Suns CEO and president Rick Welts’s coming out to the league commissioner the day before. Nonetheless, fining players for verbal abuse is a step toward combating the homophobia that pervades sports culture.

Perhaps a courageous closeted male athlete will soon come out while playing and crack open the door a bit more. But the big money is on the growing number of extraordinarily talented and brave young LGBT athletes coming up through the ranks who are out, proud and playing to win more than just a game.

Read the whole thing.

Liberals know that prejudice and discrimination of any kind always poisons and retards whatever institution tolerates it. Want better sports? Insist that athletes, schools, owners and advertisers welcome gays.