Since I came out as a lesbian my junior year at boarding school, I have never witnessed a premeditated hate crime. But that does not mean it has been easy. I am now a sophomore at Amherst College, an elite liberal arts school with what’s advertised as an open-minded student body. When I started at Amherst, I was confident and ready to be out in a new community.

However, upon my arrival, girls told me I was too pretty to be gay. Guys told me I was too hot to be a dyke, or that they would turn me straight. I discovered I was one of the only out varsity athletes at Amherst, and felt isolated. I was bullied by a teammate for my sexuality but did not feel I could speak out. Closeted athletes told me their secrets and then ignored me or talked behind my back. Although much of the homophobia I’ve witnessed at Amherst is often indirect, or even meant to be complimentary to me, it still stings with ignorance. I’ve often wondered: If it is this hard to be an LGBT athlete at Amherst College, what is it like at other campuses around the country?

Now she knows: It’s hit-and-miss. She said various students at Bryant apologized for the apparent homophobia at their school. But others felt so compelled against gay athletes that they would make Bryant the first school ever to have Sheng’s exhibit attacked.

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The Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League (a top junior ice hockey league in Canada) also took a stand against homophobia with a video featuring their general manager and two players. It’s so low-budget it’s actually quite cute, and the fact that it is so rudimentary actually drives home the message. The reaction shots are hysterical; They’re laughing through half the video. It’s quite endearing.

Four broadcasters from TSN, which is Canada’s version of ESPN, teamed up to create a video saying they will not make sexual orientation a focus of their coverage.

We will evaluate you on your athletic abilities. We will not turn your sexual orientation into your defining characteristic.

It’s an interesting choice. Certainly athletes want to be judged by their performance in games. However, reporters refusing to ask questions about sexual orientation is one of the main reasons there hasn’t been more ground broken on this issue. It’s a defense we hear thrown up from reporters all the time: “It shouldn’t matter if someone’s gay, so I’m not going to talk about it.” Many athletes are ready and willing to talk about these issues, but the reporters won’t ask the questions.

I appreciate the sentiment behind what they’re trying to say. We hear that gay athletes might be afraid they’ll be labeled “the gay athlete” after coming out (though, we never hear pro gay athletes say that – we just hear people speculate about that). Either way, guess what: They’re right. For a time, anyway. Whether that player likes it or not, it will be and should be (from a journalist’s perspective) the angle from which he’s covered for days if not weeks after he comes out. At some point it stops being the story, and it’s back to only sports stats and performance.

Again, I appreciate the sentiment: “We don’t care if you’re gay, we just want you out on the ice.” They didn’t have to make the video, but they did, and that’s awesome! What they actually said, as both a journalist and a gay man, made me cringe just a bit.

Interestingly, I couldn’t find the video anywhere on the TSN Web site. I searched the site and the video library: Nada.

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A league official entered while our team was getting cleaned up. His first comment was, “Whoa! Lots of naked guys in here! Too much all at once!”

After some additional awkwardness, he concluded, “The good news, though, is that I’m not gay. The bad news is at least one of you might be.”

There you have it. Homophobia exists, the stigma is real and the challenges are there. We can speak all we want about how far we’ve come, but the reality is that some attitudes remain an impediment.

The story raises a good point: The power of casual homophobia. The league official made a dumb joke. Whether he meant it to be homophobic or not, it was certainly received that way and pushed the player deeper into the closet.

On the other hand, just because one guy made a tasteless joke doesn’t mean any of the guys on the team appreciated it. Many of them may have been thinking, “What a dumbass.” Plus, it doesn’t mean the league official is anti-gay or thinks gay men don’t belong in hockey; It means he has a crude sense of humor and at some level wanted to distance  himself from acknowledging male nudity.

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Mike McKenna

Add goalie Mike McKenna of the Binghamton (N.Y.) Senators to the growing list of straight allies in hockey, spurred on by the “You Can Play” campaign.

McKenna tweeted this is reaction to a story about two other teammates supporting “You Can Play”:

Bravo and I’m glad an athlete is making this connection. McKenna sounds like a cool guy (he is holding a cat, after all) and was voted his team’s Man of the Year for this season for his contributions to the community. He is also a huge animal lover and raises money for various animal rights group as part of his charitable work.

Two of McKenna’s Binghamton teammates, Pat Cannone and Chris Wideman, played for the Miami University of Ohio hockey team while Brendan Burke was the student manager there. “You Can Play” was started by Patrick Burke to honor Brendan, who died three months after coming out as a gay man in hockey.

“Brendan] told me [he was gay] after we won my sophomore year to go to the Frozen Four,” said Cannone, the first person outside of family to learn the truth Brendan had hidden. “It was pretty nice that he would come to me, tell me, because we were pretty close. You always want to support your friend when he’s going through a tough time. It wasn’t easy for him to do what he did. He was very courageous for doing it, and all the credit to him for that. It was just something that a lot of us looked up to, for somebody to tell a big secret like that. I can’t imagine what he was going through, but he handled it unbelievably. It’s just great the impact he had on so many people; it’s really special to see.”

“You Can Play” has now started to gain support in hockey’s minor leagues. The first team to do a video is the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League, with defenseman Colin Miller, goalie Matt Murray and General Manager Kyle Dubas. It’s the best of the three videos done so far because it’s just the three of them talking. They is an adorableness to watching them smile and laugh while obviously reading from cue cards. I hope more of these videos have this naturalness.

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I read the story and found it compelling, but no more so than the dozens of similar stories we have run on Outsports. They all are valuable chronicles and help to change the culture. But where Scott’s story is unique is that he did daily YouTube videos where he told of his journey.

He didn’t miss a day. The 365 videos are intense, instructive, intelligent. Some are short updates, in others he talks about gay marriage, or whether gays can be “cured.” (Short answer: No.) He wades into U.S. politics and takes on the religious right.

In a series of poignant interviews, he asks the members of his family, one by one, whether they thought he was gay, and what their reaction is now that they know. He asks his dad to offer advice to other fathers struggling to support a gay child.

“This isn’t about you,” Randy says to the camera. “This is about your child. They haven’t changed; it’s your perception of them. If you loved your child before you found out they were gay, that shouldn’t change … If you think you’re having a hard time, imagine how they felt.”

Scott is very well spoken and poised in the videos, not surprising that he is now a communications major in college. “Mike” is a regular Outsports commentator who writes the blog “Imprisoned in the Closet.” From what little Mike, 22, has disclosed in comments, he is from Texas and either a current athlete or played competitive sports. Here was his reaction, in an Outsports comment, to Scott’s videos:

I just finished watching a couple of his videos, and I got goosebumps because of how similar his story sounds compared to mine. I’m not one to cry either, but as the last video went on, I couldn’t hold back any longer. The beauty and honesty of his message is simply amazing, and it touched my soul like it’s never been touched before.

It’s great to have Scott’s story resonate so well (his videos have had 539,000 views) and hope he continues to be a voice for gay athletes.

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“Goon” is about Doug, a nice but not overly intelligent man, is working as a bouncer in a bar. One night he and his friend, Ryan, go to a hockey game where one of the hockey players, who ends up in the penalty box, gets irritated calling Ryan a fag. Doug does not like this because his brother is gay and when the hockey player attacks Ryan, Doug steps in and beats the hockey player.

That’s not the only gay angle in the film. “No glory holes tonight!” one player yells in a scene from the trailer. Another review notes:

Nor is the film shy about locker-room dialogue, as when one of Doug’s teammates declares: “We’ve got to be gay-porn hard out there.”

“GAY PORN HARD!” bellows our hero, suitably inspired.

“Goon” opened last week as the No. 1 film in Canada and is available on demand in the U.S., with a theatrical release set for March 30. If anyone has seen this, please let us know if it’s worth the time.

Hat tip to Jeff Dudevoire for alerting us to this on Twitter

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Zach is a gay hockey player. He’s been skating since he was a kid and moved up through the ranks from his area’s youth hockey leagues to where he is now, playing D for a perennial powerhouse high school team in the upper Midwest – a program that is no stranger to the playoffs and championships.

Zach is not publicly out, but Craig from Puck Buddys sent me a long email detailing how they confirmed his identity. And there is a chance Zach will be more out as his season progresses.

I like these kinds of features, but I found Part 1 lacking. It is all about Zach’s hockey routine and what hockey means to him. Those are worthy topics, but I wanted to hear about how Zach’s sexual orientation and how it intersects with his sport, his team and his life. They are promising this in future installments, but  this should have been in Part 1 since his being gay is what separates Zach from most of his peers and why Puck Buddys would be interested in his story in the first place.

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Brian Healey

This is cool — players from the men’s and women’s basketball teams, men’s hockey team and tennis team have combined to produce an It Gets Better video for St. Michael’s College in Vermont.

One of the editors of the video is Brian Healey, captain of the Purple Knights men’s tennis team, who says this:

I’m an out college athlete and I’m proud to say my teammates support me as much as I support them on and off the court.

The video is a must-see and shows the power of an institution getting behind making athletics safe for LGBT athletes. Healey is the only athlete self-identified as gay in the video, which means there are a ton of gay allies at the school. Hearing hockey player Brady Earle say, “we will not tolerate bullying of any kind” is terrific and if I was a gay hockey player considering a school, the welcoming environment at St. Michael’s would be appealing (along with its excellent academics).

Related: Other sports It Gets Better videos.

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Check out the video after the jump. 

Hat tip to Ross Forman.

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I think the overall impact I am making in Chicago is really just helping to push the needle a little further for progressive change. Showing youth in the city and around the country that they can make a difference, and that they can be who they want to be without fear in society. I hope that Chicago embraces me coming-out as the student body president at the largest Catholic university in the nation as a sign that times are changing and people are becoming more tolerant and accepting of others for who they are.

Alfano has played hockey since he was a toddler; He now plays with the Chicago Gay Hockey Association.

Hat tip to Ross Forman; Photo by Ross Forman.

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