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Homosexuality and Pro Sports

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09:15 / 26.05.02

haus> criminality vs. homosexuality. well obviously criminality is more acceptable because for most people there is the 'there but for the grace of god go i factor'. They can identify with the players. They don't want to identify with a homosexual player. possibly the only less acceptable form of behavious might be child molestation.

09:24 / 26.05.02

and perhaps wife beating is not actually seen as much of a crime either....

20:54 / 27.05.02

it takes no guts whatever to stay silent. It takes no bravado, balls or anything to protect a huge salary while 28,713,888* americans are treated like shit and not even allowed to fuck in the privacy of their own homes.
And THIS is what I hate about gay politics, and I see it over and over again. They say "this is shit, it's homophobic and bad" and then NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM does anything to change it, and there's nil power to be got out of whining.

20:55 / 27.05.02

oh yeah:

*
10% of what the US census bureau population clock says the population is.

19:13 / 04.06.02

Dave Kopay, player for the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers and Washington Redskins. That was the guy's name.
He estimates around 10% of his fellow players were also gay.

03:04 / 06.06.02

fyi--from GLAAD (http://www.glaad.org/org/publications/alerts/index.html?record=885).
September 3, 1998
MS. PEERS INTO ONE OF THE COUNTRY'S
DEEPEST CLOSETS: LESBIANS IN SPORTS

"Lesbians and gays are going public all over the place," Liz Galst
writes in the September/October Ms. Magazine. "So why does the
sports establishment have some of the deepest closets in the
country?" Though many assume women athletes are, by definition,
lesbians, Galst writes, "an out lesbian athlete or coach can be pretty
hard to find" in professional - and especially college - sports.
Administrators "fear they'll lose students and money if their women's
teams are thought to be made up of lesbians." Success adds to the
pressure to stay closeted, writes Galst: "With multi-year contracts,
high-stakes endorsements and whopping TV revenues, nobody
wants to bet their money on setting up an openly homosexual athlete
as an American icon."

Galst details how some recruiters try to dissuade top candidates from
attending other colleges by telling parents the rival coaches are
lesbians. Lesbian athletes "have heard rumors - many true - of young
women who lost their scholarships when they were discovered to be
lesbians." Although a small but growing group of athletes are insisting
they be open about their sexuality, "It's no wonder that most lesbian
coaches are in the sports closet - a secret society that exists largely
apart from the rest of the lesbian and gay world." Galst also writes
that "when Ms. asked more than three dozen coaches to participate
in anonymous interviews for this article, not one agreed." Her article
is a chilling portrait of a subculture denied its full identity, and much of
its freedom, by the baseless prejudice of a heterosexual majority.

Please express to Ms. Magazine your appreciation for Galst's
forceful, thorough exposure of the appalling discrimination still aimed
at lesbian athletes and coaches by their peers, colleagues and
supervisors.

03:06 / 06.06.02

oops--that last paragraph is still the article, not me. (I thought I had stopped the cut/paste before that. sorry. alas. alackaday.)

10:38 / 25.10.02

The next ESPN magazine is going to have an article about Esera Tuaolo.

22:23 / 27.05.05

"I guess it takes a gay goalie to have enough balls to score in the NCAA Tournament."

alejandrodelloco

16:29 / 28.05.05

What about Dennis Rodman? Didn't he say something along the lines of "I'd be just another nigger without basketball, but I'd be just another black basketball player without my sexuality." in his autobiography?

He brings up all sorts of questions!

13:06 / 12.06.05

In the Broadway play Take Me Out, the gay ballplayer is such a superb athlete that he's beyond criticism; Eric Anderson, who wrote about gay athletes, thinks that the first baseball player to come out might actually be someone who's what us baseball fans call a AAAA-guy, a guy whose career bounces between the minor and the major leagues:

"If someone voluntarily comes out, it's more likely to be a 23- or 25-year-old savvy baseball player who's been up and down from the minors to the majors... He's had his shot, he realizes he's a no-name, he's going to have no career. He is literally Billy Bean of today. And he realizes, 'My God, if I come out of the closet now, I am an international celebrity. I'm on the front page of every magazine, there's movies made about me, I'm on "Oprah," I've got book deals, I've got it all.' And if your career is over and you know it, why not?"

Link

That seems to me like a really cynical reason to come out, and I'm hoping the first ballplayer to come out would do so for much more personal reasons than that.

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