As if there was any doubt, two separate instances in September highlighted the lingering level of homophobia and garden-variety anti-gay feelings still in professional sports.
The first instance involved an 18-year old North Dakota State College of Sciences football player by the name of Jamie Kuntz. He had experienced a concussion earlier and so when his first college game came up, he wasn’t allowed to suit up. Fair enough.
What happened next, however, was he kissed his much older (and we are talking far older) boyfriend up in the press box at the game. Kuntz was videotaping the game for his team, the Wildcats, who were down more than 40 points against Snow College when, he said, the kiss "just happened."
A teammate apparently witnessed the kiss between Kuntz and his 65-year-old boyfriend and reported it to the team coaches. When Coach Chuck Parsons confronted the young linebacker during the bus ride back to North Dakota - so in other words, in front of his teammates - Kuntz said the man was his grandfather.
Feeling guilty about lying, he later told the coach the man was, in fact, his lover. Kuntz was removed from the team due to contravening the rules about "conduct deemed detrimental to the team."
The college acknowledges the player was disciplined by his coach, but that it had nothing to do with him being homosexual. In a letter from Coach Parsons to Kuntz, the coach indicated the player was being removed from the team, not for the kiss itself, but for lying about the kiss and stating the individual was his grandfather.
Kuntz has also since left the college, which he was attending on a partial football scholarship.
The second instance involved Blue Jays’ shortstop, Yunel Escobar, and his choice to write "Tu ere Maricon" ("You are a Faggot") on his black patches - which many players in both baseball and football wear under their eyes to reduce glare from the sun or stadium lights - throughout the Jays’ game against the Boston Red Sox.
The phrase is allegedly not considered to be homophobic in Latino culture. It can also be translated more along the lines of "You are a Pussy" or "You are a Wuss". The phrase is a comment on another man’s masculinity...or lack thereof. Escobar is Cuban.
Controversy naturally erupted when the black patches could be clearly seen in zoom lens photographs of the game released by Jays’ fan and season ticketholder, James Greenhalgh, on his Flickr page.
Escobar, being a far higher profile athlete than Kuntz, has come under both attack and defense. Those defending him, predictably, cite the differences between Latino and Anglo culture and claim "Tu ere Maricon" does not, in fact, have the same cachet in Spanish that it does in English and that Escobar is being unfairly castigated. In effect, playing the race card.
Be that as it may, and even allowing for the machismo which permeates much of Latino culture, that officials permitted him to step on to the field with the phrase on his patches is one of the issues here.
Athletes are role models for young boys and men and therefore have a responsibility to their public. They certainly get paid enough. That Escobar had no idea how the phrase would be interpreted is simply not believable. This is Canada, not East Los Angeles or New Mexico or Cuba. Was he really that naïve? I seriously doubt it. Not too bright, maybe. Arrogant? Perhaps.
But there is a greater context here than just some baseball player or college football player. There is not one openly gay athlete in any of the major professional sports. Not one. True, some have come out after their careers have finished, going back to David Kopay thirty-seven years ago who came out three years after retiring from football. But current high-level athletes in football, hockey, baseball or boxing and wrestling? Not one.
Part of that, of course, is the mindset within those sports which can definitely preclude any coming out by a player. These are highly aggressive, one might even say macho, sports. Image is everything within these sports and even behaviour such as drinking/partying too much, being busted for drugs or DUI, allegations of sexual assault against women, or adultery - as negative and horrific as they can be - contribute to the image of the highly masculine, driven, "jock". Certainly athletes who transgress on this level are called to task and held accountable, up to a point, but coming out as gay? Their careers would go in the toilet in a matter of weeks, guaranteed. Even those who have been accused, if not convicted, of sexual assault can rebound in their careers. I wonder if an openly gay middle linebacker could?
That mindset is in place due to a convergence of factors: the players themselves, coaches, owners, franchises concerned about the bottom line, even fans. Every fan in the stands wants to be like the player on the field, to do what he does, to have what he has. If that player is openly gay would Joe Average Fan want to, or be seen to, align himself with...with...THAT? Not in my lifetime. The players know that, as do the coaches and owners. Any pro athlete who might approach his handlers to suggest he is thinking about coming out would be strongly discouraged not to. Maybe even threatened not to, I don’t know, but I can certainly envision a scenario in which millions of dollars are at stake whereby he would be. Far easier to go with the game plan and ‘discreetly’ (read: secretly) do what he does on the side, which is pretty much a textbook definition of ‘being in the closet.’
Is it any wonder, then, that in such an environment it is, at some level, seen as acceptable to have a player either dismissed from the team for lying about his relationship or having a player think there is nothing wrong with going on the field with an anti-gay slur emblazoned across his cheekbones? Would Kuntz have been kicked off his team, and any dreams of playing pro-football dashed, if he had lied about the true nature of his relationship with a far older woman? I doubt it.
Escobar was fined $90,000 and suspended for three games. Fair enough. But what if he had stepped onto the field with an anti-Semitic slogan on his patches, or an anti-Muslim slogan or a racist one? I think we all know the answer to that....he’d be gone so fast, all you’d see is dust.
In Canada, LGBTQ people finally have full equality under the law. The level of acceptance is far higher than it was even a decade ago. On the surface, it would appear we finally have attained what so many of us sacrificed and fought for. There are those both within and outside the community who ask, what else do we need? What else do we want? We now have the same legal and social rights as every other Canadian. And yet, when things like this crop up, it is clear there is still work to be done. True equality comes when all people have the same opportunity and cannot, and are not, penalized or ridiculed for who they are.
Professional sports has a ways to go before it can say it truly has a level playing field.