Focus On The Rainbow

“In a way, I don’t blame them because in the changing room, where everything is wide open, for a lot of players, they just don’t want to (declare), if they’re not comfortable,” said Georges Laraque, retired NHL player and deputy leader of the Green party. “For me, I couldn’t care less.

“But, a lot of times, if you’re a member of a team, you just don’t want to make guys uncomfortable around you. They shouldn’t be, but you know that if others know (about your sexual orientation) it (the atmosphere) could be colder.”

“You’re always trying to be better than the guy next to you, you’re always doing whatever you can to put the guy down. Something like (sexual orientation) would not be good, even though it shouldn’t matter.”

“A lot of them are good athletes,” Laraque said. “But do you know how much better they would be if they didn’t have to hide?

“Do you know how hard it must be to play a sport and have to hide that in everything you do in life?”

From an interview in a story written by John MacKinnon at The Vancouver Sun

Be sure to also read Focus On The Rainbow at OutLoudBlogs

This blog often goes days and sometimes a good week or so without finding LGBT related sports news, but today we hit a small gold mine at the end of the Rainbow with three stories to share.

First The Independent has done an interview with rugby player Gareth Thomas in which he tells in part to reporter Emily Dugan, “I’m beaming. I’m constantly beaming,” he admits, flashing a toothy grin, reconstructed after rugby took away his real incisors. “I always thought the world was a horrible place and that justified me lying. But what I found is the world isn’t a dark place… The truth has set me free.”

“Other athletes all over the world have contacted me since, asking about the processes of coming out. I’ve spoken to maybe about 10 people, from various sports. A lot of them can’t come out – literally – because their culture or religion or society doesn’t allow them to. For me, the comforting thing is knowing that there are other athletes out there, but it is a shame that they don’t feel they can come out.”

Meanwhile up in Canada homophobia in sports has again reared its ugly head this time causing a homophobic baseball manager who called an openly gay umpire a faggot to resign as reported by The Vancouver Sun.

Staffordshire University in England has released a survey (www.topfan.co.uk) of 2000 respondents of which only 7%  had a problem with British footballers being openly gay. Culture, media and sport professor Ellis Cashmore and senior sociology lecturer Jamie Cleland conducted the survey according to Reuters.

The big surprise was that we got what I suppose you’d call a counter-intuitive response and that was that 93 percent said they felt there was no place for homophobia in football and it should be stomped out and they felt that it brought shame on football,” Cashmore told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“There was a call for greater transparency. A lot of people said they would prefer it if gay footballers came out because they don’t think they would have to put up with that much abuse.”

I’ve discussed several times in postings on various blogs and on The Gay Agenda on BlogTalkRadio that younger generations are more accepting and tolerant of the LGBT community than say my generation of Boomers or my parent’s generation. This was found in the survey as Cashmore told Reuters.

“We have a new generation of football fans — managers, coaches, players themselves, I class them all as fans in some way.

“They don’t actually care very much about a person’s sexual orientation. But of course the players are living with a legacy and the legacy has become a heavy burden for football.

“It’s going to make it extremely difficult for the first living footballer to come out. For a footballer to come out after his career is over, in a sense that is the path of least resistance.

“It’s still enormously difficult but not as difficult as they think.”

So there’s hope yet there will come a day when it matters who you are and not what.

According to a variety of published articles and sources a church in Memphis, Tennessee has told a softball coach and her team they can’t play in the church sponsored league.

The Bellevue Baptist Church has told Jana J. Jacobson that she lives a “deviant lifestyle” and she and her team are not welcome to participate in adult women’s softball.

Jacobson has told local media about a meeting with church officals and said, “finally, in my frustration, I said that I am going to be clear. I am gay, and I find all of this to be absurd and against the word of God as I know it.”

I don’t believe as a general rule, when most people think of the Midwest in America they automatically think of a place where the LGBT community is embraced.  In fact, I would be willing to bet, that if you asked a group of randomly selected people where the most gay friendly places in the U.S. were, you’d  get the responses of San Francisco, New York City or Chicago. Perhaps that’s why it shocked many of us when Iowa became one of the first states in the nation to legalize gay marriage.

I would also be willing to bet if you asked those same people where homophobia was seeded the deepest (not including the religious right) you’d find that athletics would be a common answer as well. But now another Midwest state is taking on a first for the LGBT community, and they’re doing so in an area where homophobia is probably thicker than average, the sports arena.

One might expect this to be happening at a university in New York or California, but in the middle of the Midwest? I personally believe this to be a significant event as it clearly demonstrates that acceptance and inclusion of the LGBT community has hit middle America, something that was basically non-existent merely 20 years ago. It’s great to see these events unfold and this gives me much greater hope for our future than news coming out of what many consider to be the more progressive coastal states. The idea of pushing for acceptance in the Midwest alone is great, but for this to be happening in an athletic program is phenomenal.

Read more of James Hipps’ posting at Gay Agenda.

The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner Dr Helen Szoke welcomed the recommendations of a new report providing leadership for changing the culture of homophobia in sport.

Come out to Play, a report by the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living (ISEAL) and the School of Sport and Exercise at Victoria University, is the first comprehensive survey of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people (GLBT) involved in community sport.

“The Commission played a significant role in the design, testing and research that underpins the report, and we will continue to support strategies for dealing with homophobia in sport,” said Dr Szoke.

Research in Come Out to Play, shows that almost half of all GLBT people remain hidden within their sport of choice, and that AFL is the sport most commonly identified by research participants as the sport they would like to play but don’t.

The Commission applauds the position of Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade, who said today that the AFL and its clubs are ready to accept a player who is openly homosexual, and that he selects players on the basis of what they can do on and off the field as individuals.

“People in positions of influence need to show leadership,” said Dr Szoke. “The Come out to Play report highlights the need to actively do something about homophobia and reveals how much still needs to change in the sports environment.”

“It is the responsibility of all people involved with sport – players, coaches, administrators, spectators and media commentators to ensure that our efforts to make sport more inclusive are not hampered by myth and stereotypes.

“Sport has an elevated place in our culture with involvement from all areas of our community. We look to our sports men and women as role models, and we recognise the sports environment can teach us many lessons in human rights because sport has at its core, the values of freedom, respect, equality and dignity.

“The Commission is working in partnership with the Australian Sports Commission to develop strategies for dealing with homophobia in sport. We aim to ensure that sport is welcoming, safe and free of discrimination for all people,” said Dr Szoke.

You can view the entire report here.

This is just starting to make the rounds on some LGBT websites and blogs. In a writing at the Aussie paper and website the Herald Sun, AFL footballer Jason Akermanis discusses whether gays who are footballers should come out.

Now, at least in this writer’s opinion, Akermanis isn’t the most articulate person as one can see in the video which accompanies Akermanis’ writing here,  Akermanis is bound to take many hits from the LGBT crowd calling him anti-gay, a bigot and all that and with the usual venom that some LGBT bloggers like to spew for their like-minded readers.

Mind you before you attempt to remind me, this posting is in the category of “Homophobia In Sports” not so much for what Akermanis writes but because as we all know there is the prevalence of homophobia in the sporting world.

While anti-gay twits have written much worse, I see his writing as a well meaning, if misguided attempt to bring rationale as to why gays should remain in the closet while playing sports. Below are snippets from his piece.

If a player wants to out himself, then I say good luck.

Away from football, I’m all for any initiative that helps lessen public bias against homosexuality, such as IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia), which was run on Monday.

If you thought suicide was bad among young men, it is four to six times higher for people who are attracted to the same sex. It clearly can be a difficult and lonely road, one that hopefully can be made easier.

Now try being the first AFL player to come out. That is too big a burden for any player.

I know there are many who think a public AFL outing would break down homophobia, but they don’t live in football clubs. It’s not the job of the minority to make the environment safer. Not now, anyway.

We have made massive steps in other areas of society and in time I hope the environment changes to a degree where coming out isn’t a big deal.

In women’s sport – tennis, golf, cricket, hockey and soccer – being gay carries no stigma. But men’s sport is well behind in acceptance.

Young people from the ages 15-24 are the main participants in organised sport in Victoria. Some of them must be gay and I hope they thoroughly enjoy their sporting lives without having to experience any form of prejudice.

But if they are thinking of telling the world, my advice would be forget it.