It was eye-opening to hear about all of the research being executed by some incredible academics at universities across the country. Sue Rankin at Penn State has an amazing study of 8,000 collegiate athletes that promises to give us a fantastic snapshot of the minds of athletes today. Incidentally, 400 of those athletes identify as one of the letters in LGBT. Janet Fink at the University of Connecticut has data that shows sports fans don’t want women’s sports sexualized; They respond to the stats and scores much better than bikinis and bras.

The attendees also gave presentations to a couple hundred graduate and undergrad students Friday afternoon. While everyone conveyed some fantastic information that kept my attention for the full five hours, two speakers gave insights that particularly stuck with me.

NCLR’s Helen Carroll talked about the marginalization of bisexual athletes. It’s a real issue, in my mind. So much of the gay culture tells bisexual people that they’re “bi now, gay later.” That is, bisexuals just can’t admit they’re gay. And straight men tell you that if you’ve dabbled with another guy…you’re gay. I personally think most people are bisexual at some level, and that the pressure to “pick a side” puts stress on bisexuals who truly struggle in the push-and-pull between the two worlds. It was refreshing to hear Helen talk about this, and I know I’ll be doing more writing about it here.

Hetrick-Martin’s Wade Davis summarized my big takeaway from the conference: The importance of allies. I talk often about the importance to not “preach to the choir,” but to reach those who are “on the fence” or who have no interest in protecting the LGBT community from discrimination in sports. Those are the people we need to reach…and by far the best way to reach them is through our allies. Men and women in high school, college and professional locker rooms do a far better job of reaching their less-than-inclusive teammates, coaches and administrators than I can. My role is to offer them the tools, the knowledge and a platform to help make change. But those straight allies are the vessels to take the change to another level.

A big, big thanks to Cunningham for the vision of this conference. Texas A&M has been named one of the 10 worst campuses in America for LGBT students. It was no small undertaking to bring the cast of folks he assembled in College Station, and to get buy-in from the university. Plus, he packed the room with almost 300 students and guests for the conference. He’s a forward-thinker in this area…and the fact that he’s a straight ally makes him all the more powerful.

The list of attendees for the conference included:

Eric Anderson, University of Winchester
Erin Buzuvis, Western New England University
Helen Carroll, NCLR
Mary Ann Covey, Texas A&M
George Cunningham, Texas A&M
Wade Davis, Hetrick-Martin Institute
Janet Fink, University of Connecticut
Pat Griffin, University of Massachusetts and GLSEN
Vikki Krane, Bowling Green State University
Woojun Lee, Texas A&M
E. Nicole Melton, Texas A&M
Karen Morrison, NCAA
Camille O’Bryant, Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo
Sue Rankin, Penn State
Ellen Staurowsky, Drexel
Nefertiti Walker, University of Massachusetts
Jacquelyn Wilson, Texas Women’s University
Dan Woog, Staples High School

And myself, your humble correspondent.

By the way, Halo is the lone gay club within 50 miles of Texas A&M. It was hopping and quite fun on Friday night! While the area is considered somewhat intolerant toward gay people, the patrons were about a third straight, which I thought was pretty cool.

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Urban Meyer, photo by Greg Bartram / US PRESSWIRE

Ohio State head football coach Urban Meyer has apologized to the Ohio State LGBT alumni group, Scarlet and Gay, for use of shirts whose color was perceived as offensive to gays. The shirts, given to players who loafed during conditioning drills, were called “lavender” by strength coach Mickey Marotti and that sparked a controversy. Ohio State said they were a “very purple,” but whatever the color, Meyer issued this apology:

Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding the purple mesh pullovers. The use if purple was never intended to offend anyone but since it has, we have taken steps to change the color.

Please accept our sincere apologies. We have core values of respect and honor within our program, and these are two principles that are central to my personal life, my coaching philosophy, and to Ohio State and its athletics programs. Bias has absolutely no role in how we think or operate.

The letter was sent to Tim Valentine, President of the Board of Governors OSU GLBT Alumni Society Scarlet & Gay, and Garett R. Heysel, Assistant Dean of the college of Arts & Humanities. and society vice president. The two issued this statement:

“Hidden under the guise of being a competitive motivator or “the only color left,” the choice of lavender reinforces homophobia and promotes bullying amongst students. The color lavender is associated with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community,” Valentine said.  According to Valentine, the decision to change the color of the jersey is a step in ending traditions which shame people for being different “when we should be celebrating the very differences that set us apart.” Society Vice-President, Dr. Garett Heysel was equally happy with Meyer’s apology.  “We saw it as another step forward for the University and for the Buckeyes.”

Scarlet and Gay hopes to use this issue as a springboard to discuss sexual orientation and its place in athletics. Ohio State’s College of Law’s Sport and Entertainment Law Association is hosting a panel and workshop on the national developments about homophobia in athletics on April 16.

I applaud Meyer for his letter. Regardless of the reason the shirt color was picked (be it lavender or purple or tutti-frutti), it clearly caused offense with the LGBT community. Changing the color was simply the right thing to do as opposed to doubling-down and trying to parse what color it actually was.

Meyer’s letter to Scarlet & Gay:

Scarlet & Gay. Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Alumni Socieity.docx[1][2]

Update: We are getting a lot of idiotic comments saying “what’s the big deal?” with the color. The strength coach and players referred to the shirt color as “lavender.” That’s what ignited the controversy. Just Google “lavender gay” and see the number of hits, including this from ABC News: “The title of the film is a reference to the color lavender, which is often associated with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.” This association is what upset the gay group at the school. Ohio State officials later said the color was “purple.”

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Jordan Rodgers

Jordan Rodgers, quarterback at Vanderbilt University and the brother of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, was among students speaking out against the school’s nondiscrimination policy as it applies to student groups, especially religious ones. Rodgers is a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which is opposed to homosexuality and whose website talks about “saving” gays from their “lifestyle.”

The policy at Vanderbilt came into being after the Christian fraternity BYX allegedly kicked out an openly gay brother in 2010. From the Nashville city paper:

Under the “all-comers” nondiscrimination policy, Vanderbilt requires that all organizations’ membership and leadership positions be open to every student on campus regardless of “race, sex, religion, color, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, military service, or genetic information.” Several student organizations, most of them religious, have been deemed as non-compliant because of religion-centric qualifications for leaders.

The university put five Christian groups, including the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, on “provisional status” after they ignored the nondiscrimination policy when filling leadership positions. The school defends the policy, saying, for example, a non-Christian should have the right to run for a leadership position of a Christian group. It’s a policy that seems rather non-controversial since the members ultimately decide whether they want that person to lead them or not. But Rodgers disagrees:

“If someone [running for leadership] doesn’t share the faith that is being taught, what’s the point of having these organizations?” asked Rodgers, an active member of the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes. [Vanderbilt administrator David] Williams responded by saying members of the FCA could collectively choose not to elect a non-Christian — but that person should at least have the opportunity to run for office. Rodgers conceded that a non-person-of-faith wouldn’t be elected.

“If we’re jumping through the hoops of your policy as a facade, what’s the point?” Rodgers said. Williams acknowledged that the school wouldn’t make exceptions to the policy for faith-based organizations and that he understood the opposition.

For the record, I could find nothing where Jordan Rodgers stated his views on gays, pro or con. (Update: Read the thorough comment below from reader PJMc who watched the whole debate and noted: that Rodgers “openly said that he does not think gays should be allowed in ‘his Christian group.’ “)

As an organization, though, FCA’s application for leadership includes this “sexual purity” clause:

God desires His children to lead pure lives of holiness. The Bible is clear in teaching on sexual sin including sex outside of marriage and homosexual acts. Neither heterosexual sex outside of marriage nor any homosexual act constitute an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God.

The FCA’s website also has a story by a female college coach who writes about how she “was delivered from homosexuality.” It’s safe to say that FCA is not pro-gay, even if some of its members are.

We ran a story in 2010 by a cross-country runner who was gay and also an active member of FCA, who wrote about how he was accepted by fellow athletes:

My relationship with Christ has been growing stronger since I came to terms with my sexuality because there is no place in the Bible that condemns homosexuality. Just because I am gay does not mean that my interpretation of Christianity is any different from another’s.  The Bible says the same message to all who open up to the Word, and just as Christ does not change, the Bible never changes. I am no different from any other Christian in my beliefs. I am just different in my personal life, which should not have anything to do with my faith.

Then there’s this from the great website Post Secret, where people send in their deepest secrets on a postcard:

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Dundes, who died in 2005, was a legend in the field of folklore and explored the hidden meaning in all kinds of jokes. I heard him speak while I was an undergrad at Penn State about his football as a homoerotic rite theory (having read the paper in my sociology class). In the audience were many members of the Penn State football team, many of whom had blood in their eyes as Dundes went on equating football slang with gay sex. The article in Time resulted in Dundes getting death threats. Dundes’ paper is a rollicking look at how closely football and its language and goals mirrors sex. Dundes quotes Dave Kopay (the first openly gay NFL player), who wrote this in his book, “The David Kopay Story.”

The whole language of football is involved in sexual allusions. We were told to go out and “fuck those guys”; to take that ball and stick it up their asses”or “down their throats.”The coaches would yell,”knock their dicks off,” or more often than that,”knock their jocks off.” They’d say,”Go out there and give it all you’ve got,a hundred and ten percent, shoot your wad. You controlled their line and “knocked” ‘em into submission. Over the years I’ve seen many a coach get emotionally aroused while he was diagramming a particular play into an imaginary hole on the blackboard. His face red, his voice rising, he would show the ball carrier how he wanted him to” stick it in the hole.”

Some of my favorites from Dundes’ paper (you can read the whole thing here):

• The object of the game, simply stated, is to  get into the opponent’s end zone while preventing the opponent from getting into one’s own end zone. … We can now better understand the appropriateness of the “bottom patting” so often observed among football players. A good offensive or defensive play deserves a pat on the rear end. The recipient has held up his end and has thereby helped protect the collective “end” of the entire team. One pats one’s teammates’ ends, but one seeks to violate the end zone of one’s opponents! …

• Certainly the terminology used in football is suggestive. One gains yardage,but it is not territory which is kept in the sense of being permanently acquired by the invading team.The territory invaded remains nominally under the proprietorship of the opponent. A sports announcer or fan might say, for example, “This is the deepest penetration into (opponent’s team name) territory so far.”

• The trust one has for one’s own teammates is perhaps signalled by the common postural stance of football players. The so-called three-point stance involves bending over in a distinct stooped position with one’s rear end exposed. It is an unusual position and it does make one especially vulnerable to attack from behind, that is,vulnerable to a homosexual attack. … Since one can trust one’s teammates, one knows that one will be patted, not raped.

• “The end zone is a kind of erogenous zone.”

• “Both tight end and split end could easily be understood as possessing an erotic nuance.”

• The object of the game is to “score,”a term which in standard slang means to engage in sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex. One “scores” by going” all the way.” The offensive team may try to mount a drive to penetrate the other team’s territory.

• The sexual connotations of football folk speech apply equally to players on defense. One goal of the defensive line is to penetrate the offensive line to get to the quarterback. Getting to the quarterback and bringing him down to the ground is termed “sacking” the quarterback. The verb “sack” connotes plunder, ravage, and perhaps even rape.

• Thus in the beginning of the football game, we have two sets or teams of males. By the end of the game, one of the teams is “on top,” namely the one which has “scored” most by getting into the other team’s “end zone.” The losing team, if the scoring differential is great, maybe said to have been “creamed.”

• I think it is highly likely that the ritual aspect of football, providing as it does a socially sanctioned framework for male body contact … is a form of homosexual behavior. The unequivocal sexual symbolism of the game, as plainly evidenced in folk speech coupled with the fact that all of the participants are male, make it difficult to draw any other conclusion. Sexual acts carried out in thinly disguised symbolic form by,and directed towards, males and males only,would seem to constitute ritual homosexuality.

After reading Dundes, you might never watch football the same way. Enjoy the game!

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My beef with Paterno is personal and occurred in 1981 when I was a young reporter at the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa., my first job after graduating. It was then I saw a side of Paterno that did not jibe with his St. Joe, holier-than-thou image.

One of my beats was the courts and one day at the county courthouse I got a tip of an interesting lawsuit – Joe Paterno was suing Our Lady of Victory Church. The case was simple – Paterno’s son David, then 11, fractured his skull after he fell off a trampoline at the church and Paterno alleged negligence (David recovered fully and a settlement was reached).

I was told by my editors that I had to get a comment from Paterno, which made me nervous since I had never talked to the legend. I dialed his number and got him at home. I introduced myself and explained that I needed a comment on the lawsuit. I got a comment all right, but not what I expected.

Paterno launched into a stream of expletives, pretty nasty stuff, telling me how dare I ask him about a personal matter and he would talk about football but not his family. I tried to explain that he filed a public lawsuit in court and it was my job to get a comment. The berating started again and I so wished I had recorded it since I was stunned by his vehemence and use of language, so at odds with his public image (such a recording would have gone viral in today’s Internet era).

I got off the phone shaken and told my editors. When I asked what I should write, the response was, “Mr. Paterno has no comment.” When I shared my story around the newsroom, I was told it was not that much of a surprise. Paterno could be a dick, as I saw firsthand. One reporter told me that a group of middle school kids getting awards on campus were kicked out of their space early when Paterno decided he needed it for football purposes that day; that story was never written, since Paterno was the most powerful man on campus and lauded nationally and our paper was not about to rock the boat.

I often see how powerful people treat those beneath them in stature as a sign of character. From my experience, trivial as it was in many ways, I always knew that the Paterno myth was just that. Not that he was a bad person or did not do good things but that he was little better than other people who achieved his status and start believing their actions have no consequences.

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Hi, my name is Brenner Green and I am a senior undergraduate student at Connecticut College majoring in Psychology.  I am writing to tell you about a study that I am conducting for my senior honors thesis.

My research interest is in the friendships between gay and straight high school (and college) male teammates.  I am interested in what makes these friendships meaningful and how they may differ from the friendships between two straight-identified male teammates.

My research involves the gay athlete and the straight teammate in each friendship pair being interviewed separately about their friendships (approximately a one-hour interview via Skype or in-person).

If you are under the age of 18 and decide to participate in this study, you will be provided a parental consent form that one of your parents must sign in order to obtain consent for the research.  Therefore, your parent should recognize that either you are gay or a straight-identified friend of an openly gay teammate (for gay interviewee and straight-identified interviewee, respectively).

The Institutional Review Board (IRB) has approved this research study.  If you are interested in learning more about this study, please contact Brenner either via e-mail at bgreen@conncoll.edu or by phone at (860) 451-9853.

Thank you for your consideration.

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Portland State basketball coach Sherri Murrell

When you get Pat Griffin, Lisa Howe, Lauren Lappin, Sherri Murrell and  Mechelle Voepel together to discuss the problems facing lesbians in sports, you know the subject will be addressed with honesty, great insight and clarity. The five were on the “Rainbow Ceiling” panel recently sponsored by the Association for Women in Sports Media.

Moderated by Stefanie Loh, the group discussed negative recruiting; players dating each other; the silence of female athletes in the gay marriage debate and hostile athletic administrations, among other issues. Below is a condensed transcript that is worth your while if you care about homophobia in sports.

By Stefanie Loh

It’s a subject that’s almost never brought up.

Not in the locker room, not in the media.

Coaches and players don’t discuss it, and journalists rarely mention it because, well, it’s kind of awkward.

“You start to get into a dialogue with somebody, you see the fear, you can see the walls go up, and you usually don’t continue it,” said Mechelle Voepel, who’s covered women’s basketball for ESPN.com since 1996. “The word ‘lesbian’ itself makes alarm bells go off. And so it’s difficult to have a real [conversational] interview with somebody about this topic.”

But there are lesbians in women’s sports. (No, we don’t talk about it) And yes, we know that’s a common assumption anyway.

That’s part of the problem.

“When you talk about women’s sports, the historical stigma is ‘if you’re a female athlete, you’re a lesbian’ and it holds women back from coming out,“ said Pat Griffin, project director of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network’s “Changing the Game” initiative to promote a safer environment for kids of all sexual orientation in K-12 sports and physical education.

Homophobia has always been rampant in sports. Even today, as polls indicate that the general population is become more sympathetic to the gay rights movement, the number of publicly out female athletes could fill an elevator, and no professional male athlete in any of the four major sports (football, basketball, baseball and hockey) has ever come out during his career.

But gay and lesbian athletes also face a host of very different issues. The Association for Women in Sports Media hosted “The Rainbow Ceiling,” a panel featuring five out lesbians from several different avenues of the sports industry for an honest conversation about homosexuality in sports.

Here are some of the highlights.

(Note: Conversation has been edited and condensed by topic, click here for the full transcript.)

Panelists:

• Pat Griffin — project director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s “Changing the Game – an initiative to make K-12 sports and PE a safer and more inclusive environment for kids regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

• Lisa Howe, former Belmont (Tenn.) University women’s soccer coach who lost her job after coming out to Belmont’s administrators, and now works as a motivational speaker.

• Lauren Lappin, Olympic softball silver medalist, currently a catcher and infielder for the USSSA Pride in the National Pro Fastpitch League.

• Sherri Murrell, Portland (Ore.) State women’s basketball coach, 2010-11 Big Sky Conference Coach of the year, the only openly gay coach in Division I women’s college basketball.

• Mechelle Voepel, women’s basketball writer for ESPN.com.

Moderator:
Stefanie Loh, digital media editor, the Association for Women in Sports Media

Allies and outing:
The guys now have public straight allies who are sports celebrities [New York Rangers’ Sean Avery; the former New York Giant Michael Strahan]. Where’s that support for the women?

Loh: So, same-sex marriage was legalized in New York last Friday, and in the lead up to that, several male athletes came out in support of gay marriage, and some figures in sports like Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts also came out. But why is there not much movement on the women’s end?

Griffin: Sexism and homophobia make a very powerful mix. I’m grateful for the straight males and coaches who have come out recently – it’s huge to have them coming out as allies, the USA baseball teams, and everyone with the “It Gets Better” videos, it’s unprecedented what we’ve seen in the last several months. But they have a privilege as male athletes. When you talk about women’s sports, the historical stigma, “if you’re a female athlete, you’re a lesbian” and this holds women back from coming out. … When men do something, it’s perceived as more important because they get more ink than women’s sports.

Voepel: Less coverage for women’s sports. People might assume we’ve made lots of advancements, but the collapse of the newspaper industry really affected this. When newspapers cut back, people covering women’s beats were cut. It’s gotten less diverse in the past 3-4 years. Which really makes an issue with how women’s sports are covered. … These particular stories should go back to why they were a story [and whether] the person who came out was considered somebody that a lot of different people going to write about. If you’re an NBA executive, your perceived importance in the sports world is pretty large, and so I think that sort of dictates how many people are going to ask questions of other people about the response to it.

Howe: They’re unaware that there is homophobia in women’s sports. People think there isn’t a problem – they don’t know that there is.

Griffin: I would really love to see more heterosexual women speaking out publicly as allies in the ways that we’ve seen some of the straight male professional athletes speaking out lately. I’d love hear some reaction to that.

Murrell: The question I would ask [is] have we asked them? You know? I think maybe people just haven’t been asked, right [to speak out as allies]? Athletes and straight coaches, have they been asked to get their public opinion for them?

Voepel: Well I don’t know. It’s sort of a complex question there. … I sort of hate this analogy but we always use it in the newspaper industry, “man bites dog, versus dog bites man.” [Editor’s note: it’s noteworthy when you hear about a man biting a dog, but less so the other way around because it’s considered more common.]

When a lesbian comes out, a lot of times it’s like, “Oh yeah? Everybody in women’s sports is gay anyway, who cares? We don’t cover women’s sports anyway. We don’t care, they’re all gay.” I sound very cavalier, but I definitely sense that atmosphere in my business, and I’ve been in it a long time and that still is there.

When a man comes out, especially in a major professional sport, A) he’s considered more important because he’s a man in a major professional sport, and B) because it is perceived to be the “man bites dog” story.

So I think that’s a part of it that you haven’t seen as much commentary because these stories are considered sort of the coming out process in men’s sports, which is different that the coming out process in women’s sports.

Coming out stories:
Sherri Murrell and Lisa Howe share the reasons behind their decisions to out themselves in their professional lives.

Murrell: It’s kind of a long story, but after I’d resigned at Washington State, and basically my partner and I wanted to move back to Portland [but] there wasn’t any coaching [jobs], and it’s the first time I stepped away or didn’t have a job waiting for me or approached to me, and so it was a very interesting time, but I needed to leave Washington State. So we bought a house here in Portland, and there weren’t any west coast jobs that were appealing to me at the time so during that time, I had a lot of pondering and soul searching, and my partner and I basically said whatever job that I go into next, I’m going to be openly myself; and it’s not like I’m going to sit in with my administration and say, “Hey, I’m gay. I’m a lesbian.”

Basically it was gonna be that wherever I go, I need to make sure they understand that I have a wife and we are in the process of having kids. It’s kind of a question that gets asked when you’re around people all the time.

Portland State had an opening that I wasn’t even aware was going to happen and was just kind of fate, and so we had a house here, I take the job at Portland State, I’m from Portland, Ore., so it couldn’t have been a better situation. I never really approached my administration; my Athletic Director. – I’d talked to somebody within the administration as an Associate A.D. and said, “You know, I have a wife, and we’re going to have a family. Is this going to be okay?” And they said, “Oh gosh yeah.” And so the only time that I’d ever had an actual discussion with my athletic director was when I was asked to speak on The Training Rules DVD and that’s when I approached him and said, “This is going to be a lot more public than it is because it’s just kind of common knowledge here.”

And so he asked our president and talked to him about it, and my president was like two thumbs up. He said, “This is awesome. This reflects what Portland State is about – accepting of all people.” And so that’s how it started. I never really had a conversation with my players, it’s just been common knowledge and I think it’s just the process that everybody has so I have had nothing but a positive experience.

Howe decided to out herself when she and her partner realized that they were expecting a baby. She didn’t get quite the rousing endorsement that Murrell got from the Portland State administration, and initially lost her job as soccer coach. But the Belmont University community rallied around her, and her coming out served as a catalyst for the Christian university to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy, the Nashville Metro Government extended its non-discrimination policy (which already included sexual orientation and gender identity) to its contractors, and the Tennessee State Legislature passed a law that prohibits city and county government from adopting non-discrimination policies that differ from federal law.

Howe: When I was asked ‘why do you want to tell your team?’ Well [the reason is] I’m tired of my team thinking that I’m ashamed of my relationship or I’m ashamed of my lifestyle. I’m not. … What’s ironic to my story is just how many churches, how many church leaders, how many spiritual leaders, reached out to me and my family and supported us and the kind gestures. There are definitely good Christians out there. I think at Belmont University, those students and faculty showed that they wanted to be an open and exclusive campus. It definitely exists.

A Generation Gap:
The views that lesbian athletes and coaches have on coming out are evolving at a rate on par with the attitudes of the country
According to a recent Gallup poll, 70 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 support gay marriage, compared to only 39 percent among those 55 and older. This generation gap is also present within the athletic community. Younger players and coaches tend to be more open to talking about sexuality while older coaches shy about from the subject.

Voepel: It’s almost like a younger generation versus an older generation, I think are trying to find this common ground about how do we go forward to not make this this unspoken thing that exists.

Griffin: It is definitely a generational shift where the younger athletes are much more comfortable, the straight athletes are much more comfortable having lesbian or gay teammates, and it’s the coaches who are more uncomfortable and sort of feel like they don’t know what to do, you know, ‘what do I do if I have a lesbian on my team’… And there’s a lot more discomfort with the coaches than there is with the athletes. I believe that the change on this topic is going to be more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. …and it’s going to more about young athletes like Lauren coming out and being out for most of their professional career rather than an established athlete coming out and changing the landscape of sports.

Lappin: Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. … We were at the 2008 Olympic Games when I decided to publicly come out and that was the first time I’d had a conversation with any of my coaches, I mean my whole team knew, my family, it was a big step for me. It was something that I really thought I needed to do, to use that platform to really share my [story] and to help other people. [But] even my teammates who were 5-6 years older than me [who] were lesbians had issues with it – they were the ones that were really talking me through the process, asking me questions, making sure that I was really sure about what I was doing. Whereas my straight teammates [who] were about my age were really encouraging me to do it.

So I think that that stigma is still there in that older generation, and like Pat or Mechelle said, even hearing the word lesbian has different tones for them than it does for me. And I know that even five, six or seven years difference is a huge gap between their approach to it and my approach. [I’m] not saying that I wasn’t scared when I was coming out and not saying that I wasn’t hesitant, but I think that my generation has grown up exposed to gay people on a different level and in a different tone in the media on a daily basis than even women in their mid-thirties now.

Similar but different:
Gay men and lesbian women on sports teams still have to deal with homophobia, but on different fronts.

Gay men are very rarely out to the teammates whom they share a locker room with. Our panelists indicate that women generally know if their teammates are lesbians, and there isn’t much objection. But there’s also not much discourse about it.

Lappin: The atmosphere has evolved in last 5-10 years. The Team USA program has evolved and the team in particular, the women on the team, have become more accepting regardless of background – racial, sexual, religious, etc. In the Pro-League we’re really creating lives for ourselves, with partners. It is very open and accepting. I’m very comfortable with my teammates, in my locker room. Partners are welcomed at games, etc. much safer environment.

Voepel: … I’m a lot of times guessing who I think might be a lesbian and who might not. As pathetic as that sounds, it’s still like that. Not because I need to have it for any personal interests but just sort of the perception you have when you’re dealing with the team. I sense that straight teammates are for the most part okay with it and support it. They may not go talk to a reporter about it; they may not call a press conference and say “I’m okay with it,” but they are okay with it in terms of their everyday dealing with their lesbian teammate.

Negative Recruiting:
It’s never fair to have your sexuality (whether real or perceived) used against you in the recruiting race. Unfortunately, it happens.

Loh: Sherri, you were quoted in an ESPN magazine article about how negative recruiting at the college level still does take place and there are coaches out there who use that against single female coaches [in that] they tell parents “Oh you know you don’t want to play for her because she’s a lesbian.” Does that still happen very regularly and how do you get around that problem?

Murrell: Well, first of all, I have never experienced anything negative that I’ve seen or heard. Maybe there are athletes that have chosen to take me off their list because of that but it’s not something that is known, and what I really am enjoying is the fact that we continue to have successful recruiting classes and we have been to the NCAA tournament so it hasn’t been affecting my ability to be successful. … But it is out there. I have had conversations with coaches as well as with players …, and they’ve talked about [when] they were in the homes of these coaches and they said, “You know we have more of a family atmosphere than so-and-so program“ and then they would continue to talk about what their family atmosphere is like; and it was very clear to them that that family atmosphere meant a straight coach with a wife and kids versus a coach that was gay or lesbian that wasn’t that way.

Voepel: When you talk about negative recruiting, it’s a crime that the victims don’t want to speak out, but it’s a little hard to define exactly what you’re talking about because it’s become insidiously subtle. I think the code words are there… Coaches aren’t going to come into somebody’s house and say “We don’t have any lesbians on our team.” They’re going to use other code words or exchange a glance with the parents, maybe a father in particular, It’s going to be more subtle, and yet it’s more difficult to police because you’re not talking about something quite as obvious, and that’s going to be harder to eradicate. …

[The reporters] who were working on that story, contacted me really early on and said, “Can you help us? You’ve been in the women’s basketball world a long time. Help us find some people who can talk on the record.”

A lot of people wanted to talk off the record including a lot of coaches who said I’m really glad you’re going to write this story because I think there’s still a lot of negative recruiting going on but I don’t want to talk to you on the record about it.

I kind of refer to this phenomenon as the crime whose victims don’t want to report that they were the victims of it. They don’t want to talk about hey this happened to me because then they’re outing themselves.

And there was one coach in particular that is no longer a coach and has come as close to coming out to me as she can but can’t quite still say the word but it’s sort of understood. She doesn’t coach anymore but she was really interested in me helping these guys do this story. And I said, “Well, OK, why don’t you talk about it? Give me some examples of things that happened to you.” And she’s like, “Well, you know, my grandmother’s still alive and you know, she doesn’t quite know, and you know, I want to do some television/broadcasting work.”

And I thought, “For crying out loud. You’re still doing this to yourself. You feel like you want the story to be written, you want us to do it but you don’t want to be the one that talks about it.” Now that coach is over 50 years old, so while part of me is frustrated, part of my heart kind of breaks for her because she’s in her own jail on this thing and she can’t break out of it.

And again, that goes back to a generational thing – Pat’s written extensively about that. Sometimes oppressed people oppress themselves because it’s almost a learned helplessness. They don’t know anything different from growing up and from getting into the profession and then they can’t change their ways, as they get older. Some can and some haven’t really been able to.

Griffin: Once you internalize that terror of being identified as a lesbian for the older generation, I think it’s very difficult to overcome it. You shouldn’t underestimate how disabling that terror can be unfortunately. It is disabling and I really think that living in the closet is such a hard way to live your life. But I think it’s true that for certain number of women in older generations that the idea of opening that closet door and stepping out – I love Mechelle’s analogy of the door being opened but athletes still being back in the closet, but for some women in athletics, particularly coaches and administrators, walking through that door is just beyond what they can consider possible.

Murrell: Pat, I agree with you. I want to be known as a successful basketball coach who happens to be a great mother and a great wife and so sometimes it’s hard to always have to hear the tag of “the only out lesbian coach” but at the same time, I want my experience to be heard and to be welcomed across the board … it’s a terrifying experience to actually make that plunge, but at the same time it has been the most rewarding and amazing experience. And the thing that I have felt is that we also underestimate people. I have had the best support from 80-year-old boosters; I’ve had amazing support – and in support it’s that they’ve just accepted me with open arms but it’s not like we talk about it. My players on the team, my parents, and so forth, it’s just they accept me for who I am. And I hope – I hope – that the younger generation will take a look at that and say, “Wow. This can be done.”

Working on the positives: How can we work to foster a more positive, welcoming team environment for women of all sexual orientations?

Murrell: I don’t think I’ve ever coached a team or played on a team that doesn’t have lesbians. And I coached at BYU, and there were lesbians on that team. You can’t avoid it. It’s out there. …I haven’t had known experiences that players say, ‘No, I will not go to Portland State because she’s gay but it’s definitely more so in the fathers and also more so in the club coaches. But you can’t avoid it. I respond by saying that we have atheists on our team. We also have Mormons and Christians. And we have African Americans on our team. We all need to come together, really what sports is all about is being together as a team for a common goal, and we are going to come from all different backgrounds.

Lappin: I think that that starts with the coaches, but also creating a culture of open mindedness and acceptance within your program from top down from administration down to the coaches and teaching that to young student athletes, so that when kids come on campus, you are saying exactly what you just said, we have atheists, we have Mormons, we might have gay girls and straight girls. We come from a very diverse background, and celebrating each other from our differences because that is what it’s all about.

Griffin: I think one of the important things is to make where you stand clear, and I don’t think that has to be done in a certain ceremony way. If there is a comment made, a negative comment made, or someone uses name calling, or makes some type of a stereotypical comment, just say something, ‘Hey, you know, that’s not cool. We don’t do that on this team.’ I think speaking up in that way is really important because it’s how you set the tone. … Sometimes that peer leadership is the most important way to sort of let younger players know what’s expected on a team, in terms of treating everyone on the team with respect, regardless of differences. … I always am so thrilled when I see heterosexual athletes or coaches respond to those kind of things in a way that isn’t defensive, and can say look, ‘We have a lot of diversity on our team. We are proud of it. The key to our team is that we treat each other with respect.’ To me, that’s the bottom line.

Murrell: Just the simple saying that, ‘Oh well, if coach Murrell is gay, she’s gonna recruit gay players and it’s gonna be a gay team and if my daughter goes on that team, there are gonna be gay, is just so off base.’ Number one, I go to work. I check my politics at the door. I basically am doing my job to be successful as a coach and to have an influence on my kids’ life. If I had a whole team of lesbians and we won the National Championship, so be it. If I don’t have a team full of lesbians and we win a championship, so be it. My job is to be a good coach. Girls don’t come on my team and automatically become gay.

Be Honest About the Unavoidable:
So, what’s the best way to deal with the issue of teammates dating each other?

Voepel: I do think it still has a lot to do with homophobes and sexism, but even people who say, ‘Hey I’m totally OK with gay people on teams” [admit] it’s a real problem when teammates are in a relationship together because it can create distractions from the entire team if they break up mid season. It affects the chemistry and dynamics of the whole team. And I think there is a reality to deal with, which is that you do have those circumstances. There can’t be a program in the country that hasn’t had teammates who were in a relationship that break up during the season.

The homophobia prevents people from dealing with this issue the way you deal with any other conflicts on a team. I think you just have to say, ‘Hey, this is a potential thing that can happen, just like people having problems relating to coaches or having problems being separated from their parents, having grade issues. Any of those issues are things that young people can deal with, and I think if there’s an open atmosphere where everyone can sort of talk about the reality of their lives, you can remedy those situations. You’re not going to prevent them.

You’re teammates are gonna fall in love, and they are gonna get in relationships and they are gonna break up. It’s gonna happen, but how the atmosphere allows for people to heal from those situations and affect the team dynamic less.

Murrell: “You are spot on because here I am a lesbian coach, and very out. The girls on our team know that I do not like anything that is divisive and that is potential to be a divider on our team, and we talk about it in the beginning of the year when I go over the rules. I say, you know, relationships among teammates, although love is love, that I cannot force them to not fall in love, but I don’t encourage it because that is a divisive factor, and again, the number one thing is we need to come together as a team and they have potential problems.”

Griffin: And I would even say because I talk to coaches who try institute a rule that we will not have relationships among players on this team. To me, that’s asking for trouble because what that does is drive everything underground, and then of course some teammates are gonna find out, and then they’re keeping secrets and it creates such a horrible situation for your team and it’s all built on the basis of homophobia. I think what Sherri said about handling this in an open way [is great], talking about this, broadening this out, talking about how do you deal with any relationship issues on teams?

Even if it’s not partners. How do you deal with two women on the field hockey team who are both involved with the quarterback of the football team, and that creates problems. This comes under the heading of how do you negotiate relationships on teams when you’re spending time with each other and you operate as a second family. How do you do that in a way that supports everyone and is respectful to everyone?

Obstacles:
Unforgiving administrative circles

Voepel: I don’t want to paint anybody with a broad brush, but athletic administration is so predominantly heterosexual male that I think that’s been a barrier, and I know it has been at certain universities that I’ve covered in terms of the women who are starting to be ready to be out but don’t feel like they would get the support of their administration.

I went to the University of Missouri, and the University of Missouri hired a coach, Robin Pingeton, who in her press conference made a big BIG deal about how everyone on her staff was married with children and what a big family atmosphere it was.

And I, to her face, said, “Robin, you know what this is code for.” And she denied [it] as if she’s never heard of any of this before. I don’t believe her. I believe what she was saying in her press conference was, “I’m a straight heterosexual person and everybody on my staff is a straight, heterosexual person.” And the administration sat there and applauded and talked about how wonderful she was. This is the university I graduated from, and I know that all that charade that was going on the day she was introduced was about we have this straight program now. And that’s now. That’s not like thirty years ago that that was happening. So administration has a big part to play in this that they do not reach out to their coaches and say – as Lisa said, it might be words on a paper – but you can look in somebody’s eyes and you know they’re not going to support you.

And I think coaches are – you know, that adds to the fear, along with their own internalized fear, the fact that they don’t feel like somebody is going to have their back and that in fact, they’re going to lose their job one way or another because of this.

Griffin: That’s an excellent point, Mechelle. I think that policy development – many schools don’t even have policies or even if a school as a whole has a policy, it’s as if when you walk through the doors into the athletic department, the policy doesn’t exist anymore or it gets overlooked. I think a lot of administrators overlook not only abuses when we’re talking about GLBT coaches and athletes but broader abuses in athletics that we tolerate with coaches that we would never tolerate from a professor in the classroom. I think this is a huge area where we need to focus energies – getting administrators, holding administrators accountable for enforcing the policies that they should have and creating a climate where coaches and athletes can play without being discriminated against so we have more places like Portland State.

Progress:
Where do we go from here?

Voepel: What Sherri is doing, and both she and Lisa, and probably neither one of them necessarily are doing this to be role models – hey we’re out we’re moms – but by the same token, they are huge role models because they are people who show the normalcy. As much that we would think, ‘Do we have to keep proving this?’ We almost do.

The “family atmosphere” doesn’t have to be a heterosexual-type experience to model her own life after. I just think that can’t be overstated, how crucial that could be to a 17, 18, 19-year-old girl to see a happily married or in a relationship woman who is fine with her sexuality and is in an adult open relationship, not in something secretive, private, that seems shameful because when she sees that, that’s what she applies to her own feelings, and that’s really what we’re talking about with people not coming out, is shame.

This idea that it’s something I need to be ashamed of, being a lesbian is an accusation And we have to take that connotation out of the word, away from homosexuality in general. Or gay, those words aren’t accusations. They are just terms to describe people.”

Murrell: Mechelle, you articulated that so well, and I appreciate those words. I would have to say that one of my straight players’ straight mom came up to me after we won the championship and went on to the NCAA, and she came up to me and said, ‘I bet you anything, they will not show like they do with the male or the female straight coaches, they won’t show your partner and children on the TV as they always do in those “feel good” stories of the family being there.’ But she looked me in the eye and said, “I just want you to know thank you for being a role model for my daughter.” … She said, “You are being truthful. You are being yourself, and isn’t that all you want when you look for a coach? To have my daughter be coached by someone that preaches integrity, and preaches ‘be a good citizen’.” That came from a family that is very straight.

Voepel: As an outside observer from my entire career about women’s athletics, I find [this] to be one of the catch 22 issues … women’s athletics I think, at times, there’s a fatigue that we’re always having to discuss sexuality and different issues like this, and yet by the same token it’s still a closeted world. It’s a very difficult thing to navigate between the comfort level of straight women who say, ‘I’m always perceived as a lesbian and that bothers me’, and the comfort level of the lesbian who still feels invisible. … That probably, to a degree, is an aggravator for straight women in women’s sports, and so the dialogue kind of has to go on between the straight women and the lesbian women that we’re not enemies here. We are all in this together. We are all perceived in ways that sometimes are harmful.”

Griffin: I think that is a really important point. I think that heterosexual women athletes who respond in that defensive way, when people talk about a homophobia in sport or lesbians in sport, need to understand that they have a huge stake in addressing this issue because it’s not just lesbian athletes and coaches who are targeted by homophobia in sport.

The lesbian label is used in a really effective way to silence all women in sport, to make all women feel if not shamed, at least self conscious about their athleticism and their interest in competition and challenging the idea that women shouldn’t be athletes. Heterosexual women have a stake in helping to challenge those notions.

Stephanie Walsh and Christine Newby helped to transcribe a large portion of this interview.)

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The athletes in the 2010 cohort have had better experiences after coming out than those in the earlier cohort, experiencing less heterosexism and maintaining better support among their teammates. I place these results in the context of inclusive masculinity theory, suggesting that local cultures of decreased homophobia created more positive experiences for the 2010 group.

His research reflects something we’ve been saying for years: It’s safe to come out on far more teams and in far more places than most people think:

Like Neil, none of the other athletes I interviewed had any substantial difficulties on their teams after coming out as gay. Just as with my first study of openly gay male team sports athletes (Anderson 2002), no gay athlete I interviewed was physically assaulted, bullied, or harassed by teammates or coaches.

That’s a pretty powerful statement; In the 11 years we’ve run Outsports, we haven’t heard of a single incident of a male athlete coming out either (When Greg Congdon was outed against his will, that experience was in fact negative).

Anderson is now a professor in the Department of Sport Studies at the University of Winchester.

You can read Anderson’s full report here.

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The conclusion of the survey of 964 heterosexual athletic trainers, published in the current issue of the Journal of Athletic Training, found:

Many [athletic trainers] hold positive attitudes toward [lesbian, gay or bi] student-athletes, especially females, those who have an LGB friend or family member, and those who are aware of LGB student-athletes. Still, it is important to provide an open environment in the athletic training room for all student-athletes.

The majority of those surveyed — 85.4% — held a positive or somewhat positive view of gays and lesbians, the survey found. Nearly 15% held negative attitudes. The religious breakdown was interesting: Catholics, Jews and those with no religious affiliation held the most positive views. In the middle were Protestants and nondenominational people. Mormons held the most negative views, but the authors note that only eight trainers identified themselves as such.

The trainers surveyed also said they had worked with more than 4,000 gay, lesbian or bi athletes.

Of the 964 participants, 564 (58.5%) worked with student-athletes who were LGB and 400 (41.5%) did not. Of the yes group, 507 worked with at least 1 student-athlete who identified as lesbian, 175 with at least 1 student-athlete who identified as gay, and 202 with at least 1 student-athlete who identified as bisexual. The ATs reported a total of 4,365 LGB student-athletes. Of that number, 3026 (69.3%) identified as lesbian, 558 (12.8%) as gay, and 781 (17.9%) as bisexual.

Overall, the results are not much of a surprise. Those who had a close friend or family member who is gay or lesbian (58%) were the most supportive, regardless of age or religion. Female trainers were more comfortable than males. And lesbian athletes are more likely to be out than their gay counterparts (as for the high percentage of those who identified as bi, this might be a case of men who are still resolving their sexual identity). All these results are what we’ve seen anecdotally over the years.

The authors note that the study has its limitations, including the fact that those who agreed to participate might have been more comfortable answering questions about sexual orientation. I also found it interesting that 11% of the trainers who initially responded were gay or lesbian (they were not included in the final survey, obviously).

Holding a negative attitude toward LGB student-athletes does not necessarily translate into negative behavior toward them, just as positive attitudes toward LGB individuals do not necessarily translate into positive (non-negative) behavior. However, we suggest that the greater the positive attitude, the more likely the positive behavior toward LGB student-athletes, and vice versa. Even though many attitudes were on the slightly positive to positive side of the attitude spectrum, the existence of 15% negative attitudes indicates that greater attention may be needed to ensure that the athletic training environment is open to all student-athletes.

The study was conducted by Kristi M. White of Angelo State University in Texas, and Kristine A. Ensign, Athena Yiamouyiannis and B. David Ridpath, of Ohio University.

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Hudson Taylor (photo by Lewis Payton)

Hudson Taylor, the former University of Maryland wrestling star and now assistant wrestling coach at Columbia University, has launched a new project aimed at making sports a safe place for gay athletes.

Athlete Ally is a website paired with a YouTube channel with the goal of getting pledges from athletes, coaches, administrators and fans (regardless of sexual orientation) to end homophobia in their sport. Taylor’s outlines his mission on the home page of Athlete Ally:

“I created the Pledge so that we, as an athletic community, can take proactive steps to end homophobia in sports. When we inspire entire teams and athletic departments to commit to a new standard of athletic integrity, we will change the environment in locker rooms and on playing fields. Adding your name to the growing list of supporters is the first step to make a difference.”

So far, 432 people have signed the pledge. Taylor told me that 83% of the signers have allowed him to use their names and 52% of the signers identify as athletes. It has already had some successes. One male high school basketball player forwarded to his teammate and Taylor reports that “apparently a lot of the kids on the team signed it and responded very well.” In addition, the National Wrestling Coaches Assn. joined the AthleteAlly Facebook fan page.

Taylor describes the goal of the pledge:

The larger goal is to ultimately ask signers to allow us to generate stats on each signer’s affiliated sport and athletic team or sports club. The Pledge will plot these statistics as a user-friendly online database.

This will allow all athletes to locate the “allied” athletic teams and clubs in their sports and geographic locations. Any viewer will be able to access the number of players, coaches, fans, parents and other advocates affiliated with a specific team or sports club who signed the Pledge. Signers will select whether or not to list their names.

The dream is for the database to provide ratings to indicate the extent to which each team or club signed the Athlete Ally Pledge as compared to all other represented teams and clubs. I want high numbers on the Pledge so that I can use it to show universities and major athletic teams and organizations that today’s athlete is an ally. I’m hopeful that the data can compel better policies and more education programs.

While Taylor wants as many people as possible to sign the pledge, his larger goal is to get whole teams to make public commitments.

“The only way for this to really be something to be proud of is to go after whole teams,” he said.

In studying how efforts evolved to end female genital mutilation in Africa, Taylor discovered that it literally took a village to commit since it made everyone accountable. One idea is to hold campus-wide events where teams publicly signed the pledge with media present.

Taylor has enlisted his own allies in this effort, Maggie Manville and Austin Hendrix of Eastern Michigan University. Manville is the driving force behind the Student Alliance for Gay Athletes of which cross-country runner Hendrix is an officer. The two will be meeting with their school’s athletic administration to try and get all EMU teams to sign the pledge. Outsports will keep you updated on this.

Taylor’s two video projects continue the Ally theme.
“The first is The Ally’s Playbook where I offer athletes each week some proactive advice on how to change the culture of their team. The first video is up”:

“The second project is The Ally Effect. The idea is to try to encourage lgbt allies to post a video in which they commit to taking proactive steps toward making a difference. If enough allies pledge to make a difference in their community, it will have an effect.”

Taylor is an amazing ally in the fight for acceptance of LGBT athletes in sports and his latest idea has goals that will take a while to reach. But the potential is great for raising the visibility of the issue on campuses and making it one that can’t be ignored. I encourage all of those reading this to take the pledge and help Taylor build this important database.

Resources:

• Athlete Ally website

• Athlete Ally Facebook page

• Athlete Ally YouTube channel

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