Rise in Acceptance, Leading to a Rise in Openly Gay Athletes
The locker room is quiet, leaving an awkward tension in the air as Natalie McLaughlin, the sophomore outfielder of Emory University’s softball team, walks in. They are holding a meeting to discuss an important issue that the captains felt needed to be addressed. McLaughlin has an inkling on what the meeting could be about. She had just come out to the team about her sexual orientation a couple weeks ago and identified herself as a gay athlete. Her palms start to sweat and her heart starts to race as she begins to regret her decision to come out to the team. McLaughlin, originally from Blue Ridge, Ga., never felt comfortable enough to come out in high school because of the social norms that surrounded her hometown. After arriving at Emory, McLaughlin felt an accepting and diverse environment, which led her to come out about her sexuality. Then, just as she starts to feel tears rising in her throat, the captains begin the meeting by announcing that the Emory’s softball team never excludes any member based on her sexual orientation. McLaughlin felt a wave of nervous energy leave her body as she heard her captain say those words. It has always been McLaughlin’s dream to get a good education and to play at the collegiate level. She has been playing softball for almost all her life and the sport hasn’t changed much, but McLaughlin finally felt safe, in an environment where she could be who she wanted to be. The change of heart that allowed McLaughlin to come out about her sexual orientation isn’t unusual with the rise in openly gay athletes in our society. When asked about gay and lesbian relations, 64 percent of Americans showed support for gay and lesbian relations between consenting adults to be legal, according to Gallup. This is the highest it has been since this question was first asked more than 30 years ago. “I think that since more people have been coming out of the closet, it makes others who are struggling feel more ready to do the same.” McLaughlin says. The LGBT community has made strides in politics, entertainment, and other aspects of our society. Many actors and actresses such as Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, and Cynthia Nixon are open about their sexuality and have become emblems for the gay community. These strides have begun to reach into the world of sports. Alyssa, who has asked to go by her first name, is a heterosexual member of Emory’s softball team. Growing up in a small town in Tennessee, Alyssa had never met a member of the LGBT community before coming to Emory and was initially against the idea of having a gay teammate. She explains that she has changed her perspective during the past year. “Now they’re my teammates and they’re my best friends and I don’t identify them by their sexuality. It’s part of who they are and I accept them and love them the same for it,” she says. The acceptance of LGBT athletes expands beyond teammates as Christy Thomaskutty, the head women’s basketball coach at Emory who has also identified herself as a member of the LGBT community, tries to bring an accepting environment to her team. “I hope my players know that I don’t care. I don’t care what religion you are or what sexuality you have or any of that. I just want you to be happy,” she says. Alyssa suspects that the fear of coming out is largely due to society’s negative outlook on those who have a different sexual orientation. Society’s positive outlook has been on the rise as the number of Americans who personally believe gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable has increased by 16 percent within 10 years, according to Gallup. Thomaskutty believes that a rise in acceptance can be the key to the increasing number of openly gay athletes across the world. “Minor things throughout the last 20 years that have really made it that we don’t have a third eye, we’re not different, we just have a different sexual orientation,” says Thomaskutty.
McLaughlin describes how seeing other teammates being open about who they were helped encourage her to be open as well. “They were all really open with me about the way they lived their life,” she says. For most members of the LGBT community, the coming out process is a difficult and intimidating time in their life. There are many factors that can cause the hesitation and fear behind the coming out process. During the 2012 London Olympics there were 21 openly gay and lesbian Olympians, which is double the amount of openly gay and lesbian Olympians during the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to the Huffington Post. “It’s inspiring to see professional athletes come out about their sexual orientation because of the constant light being shined on them,” says Natalie. Beyond having more professional athletes to inspire the younger generation, there have also been organizations such as Athlete Ally that have been created to support the gay athletes within our society.
According to Brian Healey, the program coordinator at Athlete Ally, the organization is focused on ending homophobia and transphobia in sports by educating allies in the athletic community and empowering them to take a stand. “I helped walk Atticus DeProsopo, a Cornell soccer player, through his coming out process, and it went so well for him. He's an awesome kid and just one example of a young athlete who now feels more comfortable in his own skin,” says Healey. There are also organizations on college campuses, such as PRIDE, that strive to provide a safe and inclusive space for every member, as well as to educate and create visibility of queer students on Emory’s campus, according to PRIDE’s president, Josh Jacob. Jacob believes that these organizations are a large factor in the rise in openly gay individuals. “I think the diversity of organizations that support different communities of LGBT identified individuals serve to make people realize that there are queer identified individuals in several different communities,” he says. Thomaskutty didn’t have many organizations such as PRIDE and Athlete Ally while she was in school, but she says, “Athletics gave me an identity outside of just being gay and it gave me confidence in who I was.” Although there is a growing number of openly gay athletes, there are still those who do not feel ready to be open about their sexuality yet.
Katie, who has asked to go by her first name, is also a member of the LGBT community. A former member of the club lacrosse team at Emory, Katie felt uncomfortable coming out about her sexuality until after she had quit the team, but even then she has not fully opened up as a member of the LGBT community. Katie felt the closeness of the team and the amount of time spent with each other made it more difficult to come out. “I didn’t know if my teammates would be accepting of me being bisexual,” she says. For Katie, there was also the issue of her reputation in a new environment. “Being new at a school, I didn’t want to say anything that really made me too different or made me stand out too much, especially in a negative light,” Katie says. A prime example of negative backlash would be Jason Collins, the first active player to “come out of the closet” in a major American team sport. Collins was initially praised for his bravery, but now finds himself looking for a team in the NBA who wants him on its roster. Collins has been described as a possible “distraction” due to his coming out last spring, according to The Nation. Collins is currently not speaking to the media in order to increase his chances of catching on somewhere before the All-Star break. Due to these cases, Alyssa believes it is important for her to show her acceptance, “I support their decisions to come out. I think its part of becoming comfortable with each other,” says Alyssa. For Thomaskutty, she even found acceptance from her niece and nephew who are both under the age of 10. After explaining to her nephew that she and her wife only needed love for their marriage, and that love didn’t only exist between a man and woman, he simply responded with, “Ok!” McLaughlin found similar support from her sister, who she had been nervous to be open with at first. “As soon as I started being open with her, it would be like any advice I would ask her about. I thought it would be harder to talk to her about things, but it was a whole lot easier when I just was honest with her and upfront with her about it,” she says. The world is changing and McLaughlin tells others who are facing the hardships of their sexual orientation, “It’s easier to be yourself than to keep hiding it from those you hang around with,” she says. It turns out the meeting her captain had called was to discuss the rules on dating someone else on the team. The captains heard that McLaughlin had begun to date one of the other players on the team. They wanted to ensure that they would keep their relationship separate from what happened on the field. They could care less about whether or not McLaughlin liked men or women, because at the end of the day they were all in it to win it. |
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