The NFL, champion of homophobia
Share with others:
From a legal standpoint, there's nothing remarkable about the brief that Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo have filed with the Supreme Court. Hundreds of people and organizations, from former Republican presidential candidate Jon M. Huntsman Jr. to the U.S. Justice Department, have also urged the justices to strike down California's ban on same-sex marriage.
Given that they play in the National Football League, though, Mr. Kluwe and Mr. Ayanbadejo's amicus brief is nothing less than a historic document.
In the sweaty, macho world of professional sports, the NFL sets the standard for homophobia. It's North America's only major professional league that has yet to fine, suspend or even reprimand one of its players for uttering an anti-gay slur. The NFL hasn't even managed to pull off a successful public-service announcement: Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project, aimed at giving hope to gay teenagers, recently took down an anti-gay bullying PSA made by the San Francisco 49ers after a couple of the players who appeared in the video said they had no idea what it was about.
In their brief, Mr. Kluwe, a punter for the Minnesota Vikings, and Mr. Ayanbadejo, a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, argue that for "far too long, professional sports have been a bastion of bigotry, intolerance and small-minded prejudice toward sexual orientation." Around the same time, some NFL teams were grilling prospects about their sexual orientation during the league's scouting combine in Indianapolis. Among their questions, according to University of Colorado player Nick Kasa: Do you have a girlfriend? Are you married? Do you like girls?
What are the odds that Major League Baseball's general managers are subjecting prospects to similar interrogations in spring training in Arizona and Florida?
NFL teams ask these questions because they can. With the exception of the handful of college stars destined to become first-round draft picks, the vast majority of guys hoping to play in the NFL are essentially interchangeable: They're vulnerable job applicants in a violent, unforgiving business where the average career lasts little more than three years. They aren't protected by the NFL's collective-bargaining agreement, and even if they were, it wouldn't apply at the combine, which is run by a third party.
The line of questioning speaks not only to the NFL'S homophobia but also to a deeper desire to control players' lives on and off the field. A culture like this is always going to have dissidents. And football has produced its share, from the inadvertently political Joe Namath, whose lifestyle landed him on President Richard Nixon's enemies list, to the self-consciously political Dave Meggyesy, who quit the NFL in 1969, linking the game's militaristic mentality with Nixon's own on his way out the door: "It's no accident that the most repressive political regime in the history of this country is ruled by a football freak." (New York Jets coach Weeb Ewbank responded that Mr. Meggyesy, whose memoir "Out of Their League" details his disillusionment with the NFL, had fallen for "Communist hogwash" and accused him of poisoning America's youth.)
Mr. Namath and Mr. Meggyesy were products of both their league and their political moment. What about Mr. Kluwe and Mr. Ayanbadejo?
It's hard to imagine two pro football players writing a brief like theirs 40, 20 or even 10 years ago. This is a more progressive era, at least with respect to gay rights. Part of the change is demographic. According to Mr. Kluwe, most of today's players don't see what the big deal is about same-sex marriage, even if the league itself seems determined to cling to its "small-minded prejudice toward sexual orientation."
Mr. Kluwe and Mr. Ayanbadejo's brief is significant for another reason. It's worth recalling what first drew Mr. Kluwe into the gay-marriage debate, at least publicly: player solidarity. His scathing (and hilarious) open letter to Maryland legislator C. Emmett Burns Jr. was prompted by Mr. Burns's effort to stop Mr. Ayanbadejo's outspoken support for a state initiative to legalize same-sex marriage. (It passed.)
"We know that the owners are always going to try to make as much money as they can," Mr. Kluwe told me. "We're the only ones who are going to look out for each other, so we have to look out for each other. It's just an NFL thing."
Mr. Kluwe isn't just a product of the NFL; he's a product of Roger Goodell's NFL. Commissioners have tangled with individual players before, but Mr. Goodell has transformed tension into polarization, essentially pitting the league against all of its players. It started with the 2011 player lockout, and continued through the witch hunt known as "Bountygate" and into last year's drawn-out referee lockout -- carried on despite the obvious risks to player safety posed by replacement referees.
Don Van Natta Jr. gathers a lot of the string in his profile of Mr. Goodell in ESPN the Magazine. (The commissioner didn't cooperate.) "It's like a dictatorship," Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Roddy White told Mr. Van Natta. "Whatever he says, that's the end of it."
Is it? Foment enough mistrust among your people, and they will start to fight back, even if the specific dispute has nothing to do with them. Teams have been asking intrusive questions at the combine for years. Only now are players -- prospective, active, former -- starting to wonder if they are appropriate, let alone legal. (In response, the NFL says it is looking into reports about the questions.)
Once this process starts, it's hard to stop. Thousands of former players are already involved in lawsuits against the NFL over brain injuries. It may only be a matter of time before a lot of current players start questioning a lot of things about the NFL.
First Published March 10, 2013 12:00 am
