Homosexuality in modern sports
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-heterosexual or non-cisgender (LGBTQ+) community is prevalent within sports across the world.
There have been several notable outspoken homosexual athletes, including John Curry, Billie Jean King, boxer Orlando Cruz and Jason Collins.
Less than three weeks later, and amid the fallout from the revelations, Curry won gold again at the World Figure Skating Championships in Gothenburg.
[4] Billie Jean King is a former number one women's tennis player in the world and, according to KK Ottesen of the Washington Post, is known as a feminist icon.
[5] In 2009, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by the White House in recognition of her involvement in pushing for gender equality and the fact she was a notable and successful openly lesbian athlete.
[11] Although his reveal did not come without its critics, Collins received positive support and was pictured on the cover of Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People.
He signed with the Montreal Alouettes before the 2015 season,[16] and became the first publicly gay player to play in a Canadian Football League regular-season game.
[23] It is defined as the view of heterosexuality as the standard or preferred sexuality, and this exclusive way of thinking is often taken to the extreme in sports culture, which subsequently places an emphasis on hegemonic masculinity.
[25] The prevalence of heteronormative thinking in athletics has led to a sports culture that is traditionally highly intolerant to homosexuality.
[27] In 1995, three athletes (in the NFL, NBA and track and field) who spoke to The Advocate said that they were more afraid of the reaction of their team mates than the media response.
However, recent scholars have documented an increasing trend toward openly gay athletes in high school and collegiate level sports.
[32] However, homophobia has been on a rapid decline over previous decades, and in 2013, studies showed that attitudes toward female homosexuality in sports have improved since the research conducted on lesbian athletes in the mid-1990s.
Jason Collins of the National Basketball Association (NBA), along with Carl Nassib and Michael Sam of the National Football League (NFL), have come out while actively playing, and a small number of athletes have come out after their careers such as Wade Davis, Kwame Harris, Dave Kopay, Ryan O'Callaghan, Roy Simmons, and Esera Tuaolo (NFL); Billy Bean and Glenn Burke (MLB); and John Amaechi (NBA).
Additionally, there have been many attempts by organizations such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) to break down homophobic attitudes in collegiate and professional team sports since the 2000s.
Brittney Griner softened the blowback from announcing her sexuality by casually coming out in an interview almost immediately after being drafted into the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in the US.
[44] Since then, the association has been defending its core values of equality, inclusion, fairness, and respect in regard to all people involved in NCAA sports and events.
[47] Out on the Fields, a survey initiated in 2015 by members of the organizing committee of Bingham Cup in Sydney in 2014, the world cup of gay rugby, and members of the Sydney Convicts, Australia's first gay rugby union club, is the first and largest study conducted on homophobia in sports.
[48] The case of Jennifer Harris against Penn State, more specifically their women's basketball coach Rene Portland, was about homosexuality.
[55] The Gay Games is a worldwide sport and cultural event that promotes acceptance of sexual diversity, featuring LGBT athletes, artists and other individuals.
[58] By 1989, the European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation was formed to organize the EuroGames for LGBT athletes in Europe.
The EuroGames are an LGBT+ multi-sport event in Europe, licensed to a local city host each year and organized (most often) by one or more of the federation's member clubs.
[68] In Australian women's sports, there are a number of openly gay players, including several members of the national soccer team – captain Sam Kerr, Kyah Simon, Cortnee Vine, Mackenzie Arnold, and Katrina Gorry.
[80] Canadian filmmakers have also produced a number of notable documentary films about LGBT issues in sport, including Noam Gonick's To Russia with Love (2014),[81] Michael Del Monte's Transformer (2017)[82] and Paul-Émile d'Entremont's Standing on the Line (2019).
[65] The initiative was launched in 2012 by Brian Burke while he was general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, but is active in both Canada and the United States.
The Canadian Olympic Committee also organizes #oneteam, a speakers bureau for LGBTQ identified and supportive athletes to speak on homophobia in sports.
[92] Ten-time national track and field winner Dennis Finnegan of Ireland came out as gay in 2020 as a guest on the Five Rings To Rule Them All podcast.
[109] The New York Ramblers began in 1980[110] when an ad was placed in the Village Voice to gay men who wanted to play soccer as a team called the Rambles.
[124][125] However, on August 30, St. Louis released Sam as part of a final round of cuts to reduce their roster to the league-mandated 53 players before the start of the regular season.
[126][127] In October 2020, WNBA star Sue Bird and FIFA World Cup Champion Megan Rapinoe became engaged to marry.
[128] In June 2021, Carl Nassib, then of the Las Vegas Raiders, became the first active NFL player to come out as gay.
