http://www.thenation.com/article/162386/americas-deepest-closetLast fall, Kye Allums, a George Washington University basketball player, made the courageous decision to come out as transgender. As Allums awaits surgery to transition from the female body he was born with, he is making history as the first publicly transgender athlete to play Division I women’s basketball. The response from coaches and teammates was best summed up by the South Florida Gay News’s headline: Kye Allums Is Trans; World Does Not End.
But is this story of tolerance a singular exception or another sign that the sports world is becoming friendlier to LGBT athletes? Of the approximately 3,500 men who play in the big four American sports—football, baseball, basketball and hockey—not one has come out of the closet while playing professionally. Of the 350 women’s Division I basketball teams in the NCAA, Portland State’s Sherri Murrell is the first and only coach to come out as a lesbian (the “no lesbians” edict in college basketball is the subject of a powerful documentary, Training Rules).
A majority of Americans accept gay and lesbian relations. Antidiscrimination and marriage laws are slowly catching up to social consciousness. So why does the world of sports, such a dominant part of our culture, remain fiercely hostile to open participation by LGBT people?
It’s tempting to presume that sports simply reflect the prevailing ideas in society and that athletes and fans make up a particularly homophobic demographic, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. A Sports Illustrated survey among 1,400 pro athletes in the big four sports shows that a solid majority in every league would welcome an openly gay teammate.
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