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David Kopay rocked the world of professional sports in 1975 when he became the first NFL player to come out as a gay man. The former running back will speak about "Professional Athletics and the Gay Experience" at 7 p.m. Monday at Trinity University's Laurie Auditorium. Admission is free.
Kopay, 64, spoke to the Express-News by phone from Los Angeles, where he works in his family's flooring business.
Q. Has anything changed in major league sports in terms of accepting homosexual players in the last 30 years?
A. Certainly. When I spoke out, the National Football League and some of the people in the front office were saying hateful things. But yeah, of course things have changed big time. Look at the reaction of (NBA Commissioner) David Stern about the hateful comments of (former NBA player) Tim Hardaway. (Former NFL Commissioner) Paul Tagliabue was honored by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays for the work he had done. There's been a number of teams that have actually had sensitivity training done.
Q. Would you say Tim Hardaway's homophobic comments are typical of most pro athletes, or is he an aberration?
A. In a certain segment of pro athletes, I'm sure that his comments reflect them. I'd say on a bigger level, I think a pro athlete is like the youth of today, where your private business is your own affair.
Q. Other pro athletes have come out after retirement. Do you think anyone will ever come out as an active player?
A. I think where it really might happen would be at the college level or the high school level, where there's gay athletes participating and competing and are out. The more knowledge and the more talk of things, the greater progress we make in society as a whole, and being understanding and being tolerant will help that happen.
from The Express News
New Jersey will very soon become the third state to allow civil unions between same-sex couples. "Queer Eye", a reality show that features five openly gay men, is one of the more popular programs on television. Some mainstream newspapers, including this one, now include same-sex commitment ceremonies in their wedding announcements.
In many ways, it is easier now than ever to be a gay person. Easier, that is, unless you are a gay person who plays a big-league sport.
For two weeks, the Web has been crawling with a rumor that an NBA player has started coming out to his friends and family as bisexual. The original report, which appeared on a gossipy site, quotes an anonymous friend of the player as saying the player has been involved in a long-term homosexual relationship. The lead to the story says the NBA is about to be "rocked by one of the biggest scandals in league history."
Whether or not this particular item is true, maybe it is about time the NBA and the rest of the major-league sports world was rocked. It is about time that sports caught up to the rest of us, and that one's sexual orientation doesn't rank as a big-time scandal.
What sports really needs is a gay Jackie Robinson, someone to shake up the bigoted attitudes that seem to be both prevalent and tolerated in male team sports.
Yes, there are players who have admitted after retiring that they are gay, among them NFL running back Dave Kopay, Giants linebacker Roy Simmons and major-league outfielders Glenn Burke and Billy Bean (not the Oakland general manager).
But hard as it is to believe, no active player in the NBA, NHL, NFL or Major League Baseball has ever come out of the closet.
And there are plenty of reasons why.
"The biggest reason is that no one else has ever done it," said Dan Woog, who has written several books on openly gay athletes, including his most recent "Jocks II: Coming Out to Play."
"People have come out in every other area of life: business, education, the arts, even the military. Right now, no one has done it because no one knows what will happen."
That's right, sports ranks behind even the military as far as proliferating a culture that is openly hostile to gays.
In fact, nearly every month there seems to be another headline about one athlete using a homosexual slur to insult another. The most recent came last week when Steelers linebacker Joey Porter, upset by what he thought was a cheap shot by Browns tight end Kellen Winslow, called Winslow weak, soft and "a fag." (To the NFL's credit, he was fined for the remark, making it possibly the first time a league has fined one of its players for making a homosexual slur.)
In many sports, calling someone gay still passes as the ultimate insult.
"Sports is still one of the last great bastions of what we think is masculine culture," said Eric Marcus, who writes extensively on gay issues and was the co-author of diver Greg Louganis' autobiography. "People treat being gay as if you are an ax murderer. I say, 'What's the big deal?' But if you're someone in sports, it's a very big deal."
Louganis, who came out after his Olympic diving career was over, spent years denying rumors that he was gay. "He was tortured," Marcus said. Now, however, diving is one of those sports, like figure skating and gymnastics, in which no one seems to care about a competitor's sexual orientation. Women's team sports, for a variety of reasons, also have plenty of athletes who are openly gay.
Yet in the big-money world of men's team sports, it isn't so easy. A gay player who might consider coming out has plenty to consider: What will be the reaction of his teammates, his league, his owners, his fans, his sponsors and - maybe most of all - his teammates and fellow competitors?
In contact sports such as football and hockey, living openly as a homosexual could be downright dangerous. In all team sports, it will be a distraction for at least a while. If an athlete is on a good team, or is having a particularly good season, does he want to take away from the focus?
Of course, Robinson faced all that every day, and now he is heralded as a pioneer, an important figure in both sports and civil rights history. The bet here is that there is a gay player in the game today who is capable of doing the same.
from Newsday / Barbara Barker
Patricia Nell Warren was a trailblazer long before she was a front-runner.
In 1969, Warren, then 33, along with about a dozen other women, competed in the Boston Marathon as an act of civil disobedience.
At the time, the Amateur Athletic Union barred women runners from competing in any race that was more than 2.5 miles; the Boston Marathon is 26.2 miles.
"There were a lot of stereotypes about women," Warren says.
"They thought we were frail and couldn't handle the stress. People thought our fallopian tubes would fall out."
When the race began, Warren and her friends unofficially entered the race. Warren finished fourth and became the fifth woman to ever complete the Boston Marathon.
"It was ridiculous," she says. "We knew we could do it."
Since then, Warren, 70, has continued to expose the sexual politics of the sports world and introduce readers to the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender athletes.
Her 1974 novel "The Front Runner," about a track coach who falls in love with his Olympic-hopeful athlete, was the first gay novel to enjoy mainstream success. It has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and been translated
into 10 languages.
Warren's latest book is the nonfiction "The Lavender Locker Room" (Wildcat Press, $24.95). It's an anthology of essays chronicling 3,000 years of the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender athletes. The book also looks at athletes who challenged the prevailing notions of what defined masculine and feminine traits. Some of the sports figures featured include boxer Wilhelm von Homburg, pilot Amelia Earhart and jockey John Damien.
"The question of gender and how it's addressed in sports is an important part of the mix. It affects how gay, lesbian and bisexual athletes are treated in the world of sports," says Warren, a member of the Gay and Lesbian Literary Hall of Fame.
"In figure skating, there's a stereotype that grew up around certain styles because of the homophobia in the sport," she says. "Male figure skaters who were defensive about their heterosexuality would skate more masculine with big jumps. The more artistic style was interpreted as being gay."
Apart from shattering stereotypes, Warren wants the readers to understand that gay athletes have a place in history.
"It's time for these stories. Some people think gay athletes have only happened since Stonewall. But that's not true, and these are not the only athletes," says Warren, who says she will next write about women in rodeo for www.OutSports.com and then explore other sports, including NASCAR and kickboxing. "The important thing is the human side, the athlete's personal story."
from The Long Beach Press-Telegram
