Gays Don't Need a League of Their Own
Just a few days after New York’s historic approval of same-sex marriage, the Onion ran a piece about a lawsuit against the North American Gay Athletic Alliance alleging discrimination against the team that finished runner-up in the 2008 gay softball competition. In this bizarre satire, the Alliance’s protest committee conducted an inquisition and determined that the team employed non-gay ringers:
According to court records, one player declined to say whether he was gay or straight but acknowledged being married to a woman. Another answered yes to both gay and heterosexual definitions. A third asked if bisexual was acceptable and was told “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.” Ultimately the committee ruled that three of the five were “nongay” and stripped the team of its second place finish.
Think that’s over the top? Think again. The above passage actually comes not from the Onion, but from a front page article in the June 30 (not April 1) issue of the New York Times. It’s understandable if you believed it was satire, as the very idea of a gay World Series seems strange. Strange but true, and the lawsuit described above is slated for trial in federal court in August. Moreover, according to the Times, “dozens of gay leagues exist throughout the country for most sports.”
Because what I’m about to say may offend some, I need to declare myself. Few people are more supportive of gay rights. I served as a Senior Attorney for a gay rights think tank, have taught college courses on sexual orientation law, and authored articles supporting same-sex marriage and adoption, gays in the military, and employment protection for gays. In a column in this space just a few months ago, I lamented that straights (like myself) can’t fully appreciate the pain gays experience from insensitive straights. And yet, I find myself skeptical about the need for gay sports leagues.
It’s easy to understand the rationale behind sports segregated by sex, but sexual orientation? There’s no basis for gays-only competition rooted in the nature of sport. It may be unfair for women to compete with men in certain physical activities, but gays and straights play together in every sport at every level without discernible differences or any concern about which players prefers sex with people of which gender. Can you imagine the outrage if someone formed a straights-only sports league?
In fairness, there’s a huge difference between an exclusive group composed of a majority and one composed of a historically oppressed minority. We accept all-black but not all-white colleges and country clubs, and for good reason. The New York Times piece about the gay softball controversy quoted the assistant commissioner of the gay athletic alliance, who said the softball league gave him consolation after his partner committed suicide: “His family didn’t want me to be part of the funeral. Those guys got me through that. That’s why I love this organization.”
Gays still face oppression, including from their own families, and thus need support groups. But I’m not convinced that the baseball diamond or football field is the right place for the gay-only sign, and the spectacle of league authorities interrogating players to determine if they are sufficiently gay has to make you squirm. Talk about adopting the tactics of your oppressors.
Whatever one thinks of gay sports leagues, we should hope that, before long, they become entirely unnecessary. When Republican legislators prove the decisive force behind re-writing the definition of marriage in New York, that day can’t be far away. Perhaps the most sensible statement ever uttered about sexual orientation came from the writer James Baldwin, who was gay – at least if we accept “gay” as a category, which we’d cease to do if we heeded Baldwin’s wise words: “Homosexual is not a noun. . . . I loved a few people and they loved me. It had nothing to do with these labels.”