Homophobia and Athletics

After learning everything about homophobia and LGBT athletes and coaches in this class, I never realized how much of an issue it is for them being an athlete. During high school, I played 3 sports all 4 years and every single year on every single team there was at least 2 gay people on my teams, so it didn’t bother me. Now I played volleyball, soccer, and track, which are not typically the sports associated with lesbians, but because it was never a problem and it didn’t seem to bother any of my coaches, I never paid much attention to it. My volleyball coach was female and she knew when some of the girls were gay and it didn’t affect their playing time or anything. The only thing that came even close to being treated differently was how she joked around with some of them during practices about their girlfriends, but none of them seem to take it personal, they would laugh with her. But one of my friends played basketball during high school and was surrounded by them. She’s straight and that fact that the majority of the team preferred to date women didn’t seem to make a difference in the fact that she loved basketball. I know I didn’t care that some of the girls on my teams weren’t into guys; it didn’t matter because we were all there to have fun with the sport and compete.
In the video we saw in class Training Rules, Rene Portland seemed to think otherwise. I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that out of all sports, she coached basketball and decided to implement this “No lesbians” policy. I don’t mean to sound judgmental or stereotypical but women’s basketball is one of those sports that tend to have more gay athletes than others. It’s just so horrible that Rene Portland was allowed to be the women’s basketball coach for so long, and during her reign she shattered so many of the athlete’s dreams. It didn’t even matter that some of her victims were not even gay, there were so affected by this stupid rule. If she was so against homosexuality because of her religion, then she should have realized how much she was hurting these young women by being so discriminatory. Someone’s sexuality shouldn’t determine their ability to do anything, whether it is playing a sport or coaching it, the important thing is the quality of their play. The whole homophobia in sports issue does seem to be getting better and I hope that athletes in the future won’t have to worry about being portrayed as lesbian or gay and they can be respected merely due to the fact that they are a quality athlete.

Nylene Herrera
Kin 338I Sec 01