By Dan Woog
It sounds like a headline straight out of The Onion: Discriminated-against gays discriminate against straights.
But the facts – couched a bit more legalistically than that, of course – came straight from a United States District Court judge.
Last month, John Coughenour ruled that the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance – which oversees gay softball teams and leagues – stood on firm legal ground in limiting the number of "non-gay" athletes permitted to play in major tournaments.
The case began three years ago, when a team in the Gay Softball World Series was charged with having too many "non-gay" players. After intense questioning – which explored athletes' sexual histories and examined their predominant attractions – a lawsuit was brought. (Judge Coughenour's decision brings an end only to the "non-gay" issue. Still to come: a determination of possible damages due to the "interrogation.")
The ruling drew little press notice. But where attention was paid, there were howls of outrage.
Pete Olsen – a second-year student at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law – responded on Wide Rights, a website devoted to "gay rights and the sports industry."
"I cannot believe more people are not offended by this," Olsen wrote – describing the NAGAAA's policy, not the judge's ruling. "Hell, I cannot believe the entire LGBT/Queer community is not pissed off about this."
He said the sport's organization's exclusionary policy was "founded on antiquated views of sexuality." And, he added, it is "incredibly offensive."
Olsen noted that the term "non-gays" includes not only heterosexuals, but many others. "Bisexuals, pansexuals, those who are questioning" – all are excluded from the NAGAAA's definition of gay softball.
"So much of the (LGBT) community's struggle has been to distance society from the need to label people based on their sexuality, or to live in these strict binaries of male/female, man/woman, gay/straight," Olsen said. "For this reason alone, the policy needs to be removed."
But there is another reason, he said, that the NAGAAA's stance is "unfounded and shortsighted": Straight men will not ruin "the culture of the league." Homophobic men will not suddenly want to play gay softball, he said. Nor will super-athletic straight guys take over the sport. Those worries perpetuate the stereotype that straight men are better athletes than their gay counterparts.
The NAGAAA defended its policy by saying it was created as a response to "sports environments that were hostile and dangerous for people perceived as gay," wrote Roger Bigham in the Bay Area Reporter Online.
However, Bigham claimed, many other gay sports groups – for runners, basketball players, wrestlers, swimmers, rugby players and more- formed for the same reason. They have "thrived quite nicely without similar discriminatory language."
Why would the NAGAAA institute such a rule? Bigham asked.
He answered: "Fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of those who are different. Fear of openness. Fear of being free of labels and stereotypes to hide behind."
That bears an uncanny, uncomfortable resemblance to the same macho, heterosexist culture that kept gay men out of sports for so many years.
"Sounds a lot like the homophobia (gay sports) is supposed to be fighting," Bigham wrote. "So unnecessary, so locked into the past rather than reaching for the future."
The NAGAAA case is complex. As in any lawsuit, side arguments were raised, precedents cited. One of those mentioned by Judge Coughenour was the Boy Scouts of America.
He likened the softball organization to that national youth group. And he noted that several years ago the United States Supreme Court decided (5-4) that the Boy Scouts have a right to exclude gay members.
In Boy Scouts v. Dale, Olsen said, the majority "concluded that BSA had an official view opposing homosexuality and that its freedom to express that view was significantly affected by forced inclusion of gay members."
We – the LGBT community – can't have it both ways. We can't argue that our exclusion from the straight sports world – whether malicious or unintended – is wrong, yet then turn around and exclude "non-gay" people (whatever that means) from our gay sports world.
We can't invite straight allies to support our cause, welcome them onto our teams and into our leagues as validation of who we are, yet then enact a rule that says only a certain number of them are actually welcome.
And we can't bring litigation against institutions in one part of society, charging that they have treated us badly and asking the courts to remedy that situation, while at the same time creating institutions in another part of society that do exactly the same thing.
"Gay softball" has a nice ring to it. It's fun to play and to watch. But as Neil Patrick Harris sang at last month's Tony Awards, it – like Broadway – "is not just for gays anymore."
