by Dan Woog
July 23, 2007
Summer's here – in fact, it's in full swing – so, according to Martha and the Vandellas, the time is right for dancin' in the street.
That sounds so-o-o 1960s. In 2007, men and women spend the summer playing softball, volleyball, tennis, and polo (water and pony). This being the '00s, plenty of gay men and lesbians fill the diamonds, courts, and fields.
In the midst of so much fun – and at the midway point of the year – let's take a halftime break to look at some GLBT stories we might have overlooked.
One involves Anthony Castro. According to LZ Granderson of ESPN.com, Anthony was a 6-foot, 210-pound all-conference quarterback at California's Banning High School. He captained the swim team, wrestled, and joined the yearbook. Of course, "teachers loved him, and girls adored him."
Anthony was 19 years old when he died earlier this year. The truck he was riding in crashed into a ravine.
His homosexuality is irrelevant. He came out as a sophomore and was taunted. He took on a harasser – a heavyweight wrestler – and pinned him. That's probably the right move for a gay athlete who also dealt with a father in prison, and a mother who threw him out of the house when she learned he was gay.
But this is not really about Anthony Castro (though it's surprising that Lifetime hasn't made a movie of his life). It's about gay sports today. Here's what I found truly intriguing: Though his high school football coach "heard rumors," he did not know for sure his captain was gay until the memorial service.
The coach's reaction had nothing to do with Anthony's sexuality, and everything to do with his character: "No one wanted to win more than him. He was a workhorse on the field, and a really great kid off it."
Enough said.
Bob Witeck would not be surprised by that ho-hum reaction to a gay three-sport star. As CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications, a public relations firm specializing in the GLBT consumer market, he teamed with Harris Interactive to poll 2,510 straight Americans about gay athletes. The results were released earlier this year.
Nearly three-quarters – 72 percent – said their feelings would not change if a favorite male professional athlete came out of the closet. That's a 6 percent increase from the 66 percent response to a similar question in 2002.
What's driving the favorable reactions to gay athletes? "Culture in general," Witeck says. "A greater understanding of gays in all walks of life leads to greater awareness of gays in places like the locker room. The comfort level rises with what I call 'rational awareness.'"
The positive reaction to former NBA player John Amaechi's coming-out shows one side of the increased acceptance of gay athletes; the other side was the near-universal vilification of former star Tim Hardaway's knee-jerk reaction ("You know I hate gay people") when Amaechi came out.
"Something important is happening when people like Hardaway are shot down," Witeck says. "People know they don't have permission to go bat-shit just because someone is gay."
The Witeck-Combs/Harris survey got a bit of coverage, and it was referenced during a panel on gay athletes held on the men's NCAA Final Four basketball weekend in Atlanta. But – like Anthony Castro's life and death – this was not stop-the-presses news. It was one more example of life on the playing fields in 2007.
And last month the "New York Times" ran a story stunning in its ordinariness. The paper often profiles over-the-hill, down-on-their-luck ex-athletes, and this feature fit the genre. "Ex-Champion Is Prepared To Join March," the headline read; photos showed a rheumy-eyed, stubble-faced fighter with clearly too many hits to the head.
He was Emile Griffith, a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame now best known for pummeling welterweight Benny Paret to death in 1962.
The march Griffith was preparing for was New York's Gay Pride parade. He would be a guest of the Stonewall Veterans' Association, an organization of which he is vice president – though he has never said unequivocally that he is gay.
Writer Aimee Berg's piece sidestepped that question with Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope-like grace. It mentioned Griffith's visits to gay bars (including the Stonewall Inn) during his prime, and addressed longstanding rumors that his ferocity against Paret came after Paret called him a "fag" during weigh-ins.
Berg made it clear that Griffith should be allowed to call himself whatever he wants. So, by extension, should all gay athletes – all people, for that matter. Griffith was a boxer first, a gay activist second. In the final analysis, who really cares?
The promised land of gay equality may not yet be here, but we're a lot closer than just a few years ago. Much of the reason stems from the "normalization" of GLBT athletes. And that's reason enough to be dancin' in the street.
