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Bill Altreuter

I think this is a stereotype that is fading, actually. A friend has played against a gay Rugby team, for example, and had nothing but respect for them-- something I can't even imagine 20 years ago.

We may be getting to a place where this turns into a non-issue. I think it mostly is for people my kids' age-- unless they are exposed to bigotry, the default seems to be tolerance. And athletes-- athletes have a yardstick. They measure other people by how well they do what they do. We haven't seen the gay Jackie Robinson yet, but I think when we do it will be the fans that are the problem, not the majority of other athletes on the field.

Of course, my optimism keeps getting me tripped up, so I suppose this could be just one more example of how wishful thinking colors my perception. I know that Mike Piazza was worried enough about being thought gay that he had a press conference to deny it-- and although I love Mike Piazza, I will always be a little disappointed in him for that.

Linkmeister

I was eleven and living in LA when the Griffith/Paret fight took place there. I remember it pretty well, and as a subscriber to SI I saw the story. As far as gays in baseball go, I think Glenn Burke came out after he retired, and there may have been another guy (Billy Beane, maybe? I'm unsure) who also came out. I'm sure there have been others; I think I saw a quote from a current pitcher who said he was sure he'd played with gay teammates, and he was sure he would again.

Shakespeare's Sister

In a follow-up to my post on Gerald Allen, I posted a question that my husband asked:

Should the Sistine Chapel be burned to the ground since it’s graced with over 300 figures painted by raging homosexual Michelangelo?

The thought of removing all traces of contributions to our culture by the GLBT community is ludicrous, and truly one of the most hateful and self-defeating notions I have ever encountered. And, as Bill astutely noted, with homophobia becoming a thing of the past with increasing tolerance (or, more accurately and even better, indifference) toward it among each new generation, such notions become the province of small minds populating ever-shrinking arenas. And that is a very good thing.

Douglass Truth

I think there is a shift going on, and that that very shift is inspiring the terrors in gay-haters everywhere, whatever the source of their hatred. Everyone's aware that studies have shown that the more virulent a man's hatred for gays is, the more likely he's "inspired" by gay porn.

Anyone read The Alphabet vs The Goddess? Interesting take on the reasons for misogyny and homophobia there, seems right on, and is validated by the way fundamentalisms of whatever stripe all seem to agree on these sexual matters.

But I do think things are changing - kids today are much less frightened of their own or of others' sexuality. So the fundies will lose this one.

sfmike

Thank you for confirming what I already suspected. I have three blue-collar brothers-in-law (merchant marine, diver, construction contractor) and none of them by deed, gesture, or speech over the last 20 years have given me any indication that my being a homo was any kind of a problem. They weren't being "tolerant," they just didn't give a crap which was totally charming, and it spoke to their essential hetero dudeness.

I think you're off the track with athletics being a special category. Though I loved your excerpt from "Shadow Boxer," I think ethnicity may have had as much to do with the tragedy as the "maricon" business. Here's a counter-story, from San Francisco in the early 1980s, at a pick-up softball game at a public park. The $10 rental for the field was being paid each week by the Gay Softball League, but anyone could show up, and it was about three-quarters gay and one-quarter hetero dudes who just wanted to get some Sunday exercise and baseball was probably the only game they were all good at. The guys who showed up on these Sundays weren't just "straight acting," most of them were essentially "straight" except for their actual sexual preferences, and I always thought it was unkind of God to do that to people who would so obviously have fit into society seamlessly, except for...

One day a new person arrived, named December, a tall, skinny, shaved-head black queen wearing a leopard-skin print blouse that was torn off the shoulder a la "Flashdance" and a matching set of leopard-skin hot pant shorts. We had all learned to be "tolerant" but we didn't really care for drag queens as a general rule. In fact, when December stepped into the batter's box, all the outfielders looked at each other and we all marched 50 yards towards the infield, and waited. What we hadn't noticed was that December's body looked like Jesse Owens and on the first pitch he didn't just hit it over our heads, he hit it so far that it ended up resting in another softball field 200 yards away. We didn't even chase after it but fell to the ground in "we are not worthy" postures.

Real athletes, pro and amateur, don't care what anybody does with their dicks. They care whether somebody can torque their body and deliver the hit, or make the catch or pass the puck/ball. Our pickup group got over our "tolerance" of December real fast and started the competition of trying to get him/her to play the next year for our respective teams.

coturnix

The fear of being preceived as feminine is called femiphobia. It is the subject of Stephen Ducat's "The Wimp Factor" and recently a lot of my blog-writing. Just search "femiphobia" on Google or Technorati.

I have recently linked to a post from Pam's House Blend about a particularly self-hating gay-bashing County Commissioner.

Publius of Legal Fiction (http://lawandpolitics.blogspot.com) posted last night (May 1 2005) a funny post about the way anti-gay censorship may play out if Allan wins.

Erik Loomis

I wonder if that ban in Alabama would include anything written by Roy Cohn? Or a future book by Jeff Gannon?

coturnix

Funny, Publius also brings in Roy Cohn in his parable...

Leah A

Wonderful post. Shadow boxing is a superb metaphor for what's going on with this eruption of phobic fear of gayness.

Absolutely right about Smith's piece; a fine piece of writing. And I'll take real journalism any place I can find it. Thank-you for the links.

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