Billie Jean King Out To Win

High-profile people who come out as gay or lesbian often script those announcements, like former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's "I am a gay American" news conference in 2004 or singer Lance Bass' "I'm Gay" People magazine cover this summer.
But one of the most iconic lesbians in the world -- tennis legend Billie Jean King -- has never made such a statement. She was sued by a former lover for palimony in 1981 and held a news conference, with her husband at her side, where she confirmed that she had indeed had an affair with a woman a decade before, but she did not address her own sexual orientation.
King had a new female lover at that time -- whom she is still with -- but she remained married to her husband for six more years. In an autobiography written "under duress," she now says, in 1982, King wrote, "Obviously, I must be bisexual." She did not come out to her parents until she was 51.
This Wednesday is National Coming Out Day, and King, who was in San Francisco at the end of September to receive an award from the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, spoke about her exit from the closet.
"I think you're really only out when you come out on your own terms, and I wasn't totally out, probably," said King, who is now 62 and identifies as a lesbian. "I think ... when I really felt I could say that with all honesty would be when Larry and I got divorced (in 1987), because my actions were matching my words."
While King's role in shaping the history of tennis and women's athletics is well established -- the USTA National Tennis Center in New York was renamed for her at this year's U.S. Open -- she has yet to play on the center court of the gay rights movement.
She wants to change that, though, and has recently met with several national leaders.
"I'm planning the next three to five years of my life in the next few months. I'd like to make a difference in the community," King said.
A host of famous and semi-famous people recently have published books about their own coming out. McGreevey is touring the country now -- he will be in San Francisco at the end of this week. Former NFL player Esera Tuaolo and Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury recently wrote their tales. Bass, who was a member of the musical group 'N Sync, is reportedly working on one, too.
The books' themes are much the same: the emotional toll of hiding same-sex attractions, the challenge of seeing oneself fitting into a heterosexually dominant world -- both in and out of the closet -- and the feeling of freedom gained from being open about one's sexuality.
King plans to write another autobiography -- her third -- and said that while it is better for people to be honest, she would "never out somebody -- ever, ever, ever." The palimony lawsuit filed against King, which ultimately was thrown out, resulted in her being dropped by several sponsors and cost her millions in endorsement dollars.
"I was outed at 37 and I was retiring,'' King said, in her matter-of-fact tone.
"I didn't have any place to go get any money, and I had to go out and play two more years because I didn't have any money for lawyers. It was rough.
"A person is only ready when they're ready. That's it. And nobody should make a judgment on somebody else. We can never walk a mile in somebody's shoes; we don't know their pain level; we don't know what they're feeling; we don't know what happened to them; we don't know."
For King, had it happened a decade earlier, when she began the affair and was organizing the first women's tennis tour, she believes it would have doomed the sport.
"If I had been out, we probably wouldn't have women's professional tennis the way you know it today,'' she maintains. "That's a little pressure, baby. It's a lot more pressure than most people realized was going on."
After founding the WTA Tour, she went on to beat Bobby Riggs in 1973 in the "Battle of the Sexes'' match, then co-founded World Team Tennis and the Women's Sports Foundation.
During the interview, King answered questions as if she were chasing down shots on a tennis court. Her energy was palpable; she rarely sat still, repeated phrases for emphasis and lobbed questions back at me. As a photographer took pictures, King wore a blue blazer that matched her pants, but shed it as soon as the camera went away and sat comfortably in a T-shirt.
She is the quintessential coach -- she improved Martina Navratilova's game considerably in the early 1990s -- and excels at competitive strategies. For the gay rights movement, that means focusing entirely on winning legal rights, she said.
King owns the World Team Tennis organization with her partner, Ilana Kloss, but they cannot offer insurance benefits for domestic partners because the business employs fewer than 50 people.
Such disparities should be highlighted without invoking religious arguments about homosexuality, King said.
"When you get into religion, you cannot win," she said, adding that she is a "big believer in the separation of church and state, and I think we need to keep that."
San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society gave King the Walker Award, named for the society's first gay history archivist, Willie Walker. The award honors people who have made significant contributions to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
King's partner did not attend -- the two met up in Los Angeles the next day -- and it is only recently that King has started referring to Kloss by name. Kloss had objected to King talking publicly about her sexuality, King said.
Like many gay and lesbian people, King had the most difficulty in coming out to her parents. Her childhood home in Long Beach was intolerant of homosexuality, and King feared her parents might end their relationship with her if she pushed it.
She danced around the topic with her father and her mother, who would leave the room each time King got close to the point of talking frankly with them. Her parents understood their daughter's relationship, she said, but she never got to where she could "just really say it, really get it out, really cry."
"Then I got to a point with a therapist where the therapist said, 'You know, you've given all your power to your parents. When are you ready to get your power back?' And when she said that, I heard her -- we hear things when we're ready -- and I heard her. That's when I was 51 and said I have to be willing to lose my parents and that's OK."
Her parents did not reject King, and she was surprised that her father -- who died this year and was the source of the homophobia in her childhood home -- handled the transition better than her mother.
With her parents' acceptance -- and her partner's permission to speak freely -- King said the nightmare that was her closet has completely disappeared.
"I'm in such a different place. I'm in such a different place I don't believe it," she said. "I'm finally comfortable in my own skin."
In that spirit, King refuses to have laser surgery on her eyes because she likes kids who have to wear eyeglasses to see her doing the same. She usually carries four pairs of glasses, she said, and has her favorite frames in three colors. The thick frames she wore for many of her most important tennis matches were donated to a charity for the visually impaired in New York.
"I should probably start saving some of them for the archives," she said, making herself laugh.
from The San Francisco Chronicle