Why most gay athletes are still reluctant to come out
Even as popular culture makes space for gay and lesbian lives, the sports world remains cloistered in its own heterosexist silo, says former Canadian Olympian Mark Tewksbury.
"It's incredible that sport has remained the last bastion of 18th-century thinking," says Tewksbury, who brought home a gold medal for the 100 meters backstroke at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona while still closeted.
Everything else has progressed, he says, but the sports world stands out as the exception, as a large closet on an increasingly open horizon.
"It's a very difficult place to be if you're not straight," Tewksbury said at Vancouver's Q Hall of Fame launch last September.
"Sport is still top down from policy makers," he explained to Xtra in 2006, after the release of his book, Inside Out. "It's very dogmatic and rule-bound. People don't want to change rule structures. It's by nature highly conservative. It's pretty much the last machinations of the old-boys club."
No surprise then that Tewksbury waited until after he retired to come out.
"I wasn't ready," he says when asked why he didn't come out during competition. "It's a complicated issue. There was a lot of fear - fear of losing my coach, my teammates and my livelihood."
If the average private gay citizen is afraid to come out, think how professional athletes feel, he said in 2006. "Think about that amplified exponentially because you're in the public eye, part of this macho image world. You're maybe physically putting yourself at risk. That's what probably keeps a gay male professional team player in the closet."
It's fear of the unknown public response that keeps athletes in the closet today, Tewksbury says.
Jim Buzinski agrees.
Buzinski is co-founder of Outsports.com, a US-based online publication dedicated to gay athletes and sport. He, too, thinks athletes don't come out because they're afraid of how the public, their coaches and their teammates will respond.
"[Athletes] need some assurance that nothing will change and they will be treated the same," he says, "and until they get that they will stay in the closet."
The coaches, administration and straight athletes need to create an environment more conducive to coming out, Buzinski says. "There has to be more acceptance."
"We need more people to come out in all areas of society and sport is no different," he notes. "We are still waiting for people to come out and tell their stories so people don't feel they are alone, [but] people don't want to be the one out there by themselves. They don't want to be the pioneer."
Some surveys suggest that the highest-profile professional men's sports leagues may be more welcoming than many gays and lesbians believe.
A 2006 Sports Illustrated survey asked pro basketball, football and hockey players whether they would "welcome an openly gay teammate?" Over half the athletes polled from the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL) said yes.
The NHL was the least homophobic, with 80 percent of the 346 players polled saying they would have no problem with a gay member on their team.
The Sports Illustrated findings sound positive, Buzinski says, but the theory must be tested. "It's nice to hear and it's a positive step, but until someone active in the sport comes out and says, ‘I'm gay,' no one will ever know how accurate the survey is."
