Sports
Changing minds by engaging kids early
Athlete Ally takes inclusive message to schools
Kyra McClary and Sam Song have reaped the rewards of LGBT sensibility training in sports. These Team D.C. scholarship winners say coming out to their teammates was not a problem. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Track and Field runner Joanna Harper loves the rush competition brings her.
Her years on the field have taught her all about discipline, competition and hard work. However, her hard work hasn’t just been about pushing her physicality to the limit because Harper is not only an athlete but also a transgender woman.
Harper, along with other trans athletes, has faced opposition from others in her sport because she is trans. She transitioned later in life, in 2004, and was competing with other adults. These adults, she says, had a mindset against transgender athletes competing in sports that would be hard to change even if they were trained on the issue.
“There are some deeply held prejudices against transgender women,” Harper says. “Training isn’t necessarily going to change those prejudices.”
Former NCAA wrestler Hudson Taylor is trying to remake attitudes toward LGBT athletes in sports with his non-profit organization, Athlete Ally. The organization educates athletic communities on LGBT issues in sports and builds public awareness through its professional athlete ambassadors who work to advocate for the message. Taylor and other campus ambassadors travel to elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges all over the country to educate on LGBT issues in sports.
Athlete Ally’s mission is aimed specifically at younger people with ambassadors giving talks to students as young as kindergarten. He says prejudices are taught at a young age and become ingrained in sports culture.
“If we’re looking at the solution in sports, the only way that we’re going to break the cycle is if we start at the very beginning,” Taylor says. “I think by educating athletes and coaches early we can hopefully be proactive and prevent some of the socialized homophobia that is a by-product of sport at an early age.”
Taylor, who served as guest editor of this special Blade sports edition, admits that explaining LGBT equality to young children is a different message than it would be talking to a college sports team. But he says the core of the message is still the same.
“There is an underlying principal of treat others as you want to be treated and don’t use hurtful demeaning language,” Taylor says. “It’s an important lesson not only for a kindergartener but even for a professional athlete.”
Taylor says that more often than not, Athlete Ally is the first LGBT sensitivity training a person has received. He says people are coming out at younger ages than ever before. LGBT people are coming out more frequently in high school and before instead of in adulthood. Taylor says that means more people have a personal connection to someone being LGBT. Despite that, athletic departments and LGBT centers on campus do not work together in the way they should, he says.
Taylor says that disconnect between athletic departments and LGBT centers is one of the reasons sports are still behind in LGBT equality.
Being both out and on a sports team is more common at a younger age than it ever has been before. Two 2015 Team D.C. Scholarship winners, Kyra McClary and Sam Song, are both out and say they haven’t encountered any issues over their sexual identity. Song is a swimmer who graduated from Poolesville High School and just completed his first year at St. Lawrence University. He says that when he came out to his team, it wasn’t a big deal.
“They were cool with it,” Song says. “It was no cause for huge panic or anything. They said, ‘That’s totally cool. It doesn’t affect the fact that you are part of the team and that what you do is important.’”
McClary says she had a similar experience.
“I think they’d all guessed,” McClary says. “We go to a really liberal school. Everyone is just like you, so no one really cares.”
McClary and Song also say their schools did not offer LGBT sensitivity training for athletes and coaches.
Still, Song thinks that having an LGBT sensitivity training course for coaches and athletes in schools would still be beneficial because of how sports culture is structured, especially when it comes to homophobic language.
“Homophobic comments are tossed around the locker room often,” Song says. “If people were at least exposed to this and were told to take it seriously and to be aware of the connotations of derogatory homophobic language, then they would be aware of what the word actually means and its not something meant to be taken lightly. It’s not meant to be used to describe an LGBT person as weak.”
Location may also have a lot to do with the need for LGBT sensitivity training in sports. McClary says she doesn’t see a real need for it in her situation because she has no plans to move to a conservative area.
“I’m planning to live in the North, “McClary says. “If I were going to live in Mississippi or something, then I would be worried.”
Athlete Ally has worked with schools in the South but Taylor says working with conservative southern schools has been more difficult.
“There are more obstacles to entry,” Taylor says. “I spent a week speaking at high schools and middle schools in Florida and a bunch of schools required every one of the kids to have their parents sign off on having me come and speak. Schools are making it a lot harder for kids to receive this message.”
It’s a message Taylor thinks is the starting point to healing other problems and fears in the country. He says that athletics have such an admired status in schools that it’s a great place to start the conversation of tolerance for not only LGBT equality but also moving toward ending sexism, racism and ableism as well.
“You go to any high school and middle school in the country and the hallways are not lined with academic trophies but athletic trophies,” Taylor says. “If we can educate our athletic population on how to be better citizens and people, how to be kind to one another, I think the ripple effect will be profound.”
Children learning these lessons and taking it with them as they grow older is a goal that Harper can get behind.
“Realistically anytime somebody is different, they’re going to stand out and they’re going to be picked on by other kids,” Harper says. “But the younger one can start with sensitivity training, the better life will be.”
CONTENT WARNING: The following story discusses suicide ideation.
Her first few weeks behind bars in a Russian prison took a terrible toll on Brittney Griner, the lesbian WNBA star who is breaking her silence on the 10 months she was held on drug-related charges.
“I wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks,” Griner told ABC’s Robin Roberts in a primetime interview Wednesday. “I felt like leaving here so badly.”
The two-time Olympic gold medalist and nine-time WNBA All-Star, who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, said she ultimately decided against suicide, partly because she feared Russian authorities would not release her body to her wife, Cherelle Griner.
Griner, 33, was arrested on Feb. 17, 2022, at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Khimki, a suburb of Moscow. Authorities said they found vape cartridges in her luggage containing cannabis oil, which is illegal in the country.
Griner told Roberts that was the result of a “mental lapse” on her part — packing the cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage, Griner said that she had overslept on the morning she was leaving for Russia to play during the WNBA’s off-season, which is how many of the league’s vastly underpaid players earn a living, compared to NBA players.
So, she packed while she was “in panic mode,” Griner said.
“My packing at that moment was just throwing all my stuff in there and zipping it up and saying, ‘OK, I’m ready,’” she told Roberts.
After landing in Russia, Griner realized that she had those two cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage as Russian security officers inspected her bag at the airport. She recalled the moment as a sinking feeling.
“I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God.’ Like, ‘How did I — how did I make this mistake?’” Griner said. “I could just visualize everything I worked so hard for just crumbling and going away.”
Russian authorities immediately arrested Griner, but her trial would not take place for five months. She described the horrible conditions of her imprisonment during that delay, saying that she didn’t always have toilet paper and that the toothpaste they gave her had expired about 15 years ago.
“That toothpaste was expired,” she said. “We used to put it on the black mold to kill the mold on the walls.”
“The mattress had a huge blood stain on it, and they give you these thin two sheets,” she added. “So you’re basically laying on bars.”
On July 7, 2022, Griner pleaded guilty at her trial to drug charges, admitting that she had the vape cartridges containing cannabis oil but stating she put them in her luggage unintentionally. She testified that she had packed the cartridges by accident, and had “no intention” to break Russian law.
Roberts pressed Griner on this point: “You know there are those who say, ‘Come on. How did you not know that you had cartridges in your luggage?’”
“It’s just so easy to have a mental lapse,” Griner replied. “Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn’t take away from how that can happen,” she explained.
Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison on Aug. 4, 2022, and in October 2022, a judge denied the appeal filed by Griner’s attorneys.
The sentence landed Griner in a penal colony in the Russian region of Mordovia.
“It’s a work camp. You go there to work,” said Griner. “There’s no rest.” Her job was cutting fabric for Russian military uniforms.
“What were the conditions like there?” Roberts asked.
“Really cold,” Griner said. So cold that her health was impacted and she decided to chop off her long dreadlocks.
“What was that like losing that part of you, too?” Roberts asked Griner.
“Honestly, it just had to happen. We had spiders above my bed — making nests,” she said. “My dreads started to freeze,” she added. “They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to survive.”
Her arrest came around the same time as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, further increasing tensions between Russia and the U.S. But as the Los Angeles Blade reported on Dec, 8, 2022, Russia agreed to release Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
However, before winning her freedom, Griner revealed authorities forced her to write a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“They made me write this letter. It was in Russian,” she said. “I had to ask for forgiveness and thanks from their so-called great leader. I didn’t want to do it, but at the same time I wanted to come home.”
Griner said her heart sank upon boarding the plane to freedom and finding that Paul Whelan, another American the White House said was “wrongfully detained,” wasn’t leaving Russia with her.
“I walked on and didn’t see him, maybe he’s next. Maybe they will bring him next,” she said. “They closed the door, and I was like, are you serious? You’re not going to let this man come home now.”
Griner recounts on the experience in “Coming Home,” a memoir set to be released on May 7.
988 is the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and is available 24/7 via phone, text or chat to everyone of all ages, orientations and identities. If you are a transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming person considering suicide, Trans Lifeline can be reached at 877-565-8860. LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger) can reach the Trevor Project Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386. You can still also contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 24 hours a day, and it’s available to people of all ages and identities.
Additional resources:
If you are in a life-threatening situation, please dial 911.
If you are in crisis, please dial 988 or contact Rainbow Youth Project directly at +1 (317) 643-4888
Sports
Bisexual former umpire sues Major League Baseball for sexual harassment
Brandon Cooper claims female colleague sexually harassed him
A fired former umpire is suing Major League Baseball, claiming he was sexually harassed by a female umpire and discriminated against because of his gender and his sexual orientation.
Brandon Cooper worked in the minor league Arizona Complex League last year, and according to the lawsuit he filed Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, he identifies as bisexual.
“I wanted my umpiring and ability to speak for itself and not to be labeled as ‘Brandon Cooper the bisexual umpire,’” he told Outsports. “I didn’t want to be labeled as something. It has been a passion of mine to simply make it to the Major Leagues.”
But that didn’t happen. Instead of being promoted, he was fired. His suit names MLB and an affiliated entity, PDL Blue, Inc., and alleges he had endured a hostile work environment and wrongful termination and/or retaliation because of gender and sexual orientation under New York State and New York City law.
“Historically the MLB has had a homogenous roster of umpires working in both the minor and major leagues,” Cooper claims in his suit. “Specifically, to date there has never been a woman who has worked in a (regular) season game played in the majors, and most umpires are still Caucasian men. To try to fix its gender and racial diversity issue, defendants have implemented an illegal diversity quota requiring that women be promoted regardless of merit.”
Cooper claims former umpire Ed Rapuano, now an umpire evaluator, and Darren Spagnardi, an umpire development supervisor, told him in January 2023 that MLB had a hiring quota, requiring that at least two women be among 10 new hires.
According to the suit, Cooper was assigned to spring training last year and was notified by the senior manager of umpire administration, Dusty Dellinger, that even though he received a high rating in June from former big league umpire Jim Reynolds, now an umpire supervisor, that women and minority candidates had to be hired first.
Cooper claims that upon learning Cooper was bisexual, fellow umpire Gina Quartararo insulted him and fellow umpire Kevin Bruno by using homophobic slurs and crude remarks. At that time, Quartararo and Cooper worked on the same umpiring crew and being evaluated for possible promotion to the big leagues.
This season, Quartararo is working as an umpire in the Florida State League, one of nine women who are working as minor league umpires.
Cooper said he notified Dellinger, but instead of taking action against Quartararo, he said MLB ordered Cooper to undergo sensitivity training. According to his lawsuit, he was also accused of violating the minor league anti-discrimination and harassment policy.
Cooper’s suit says he met with MLB Senior Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Billy Bean — who the Los Angeles Blade reported in December is battling cancer.
The lawsuit says at that meeting, Bean told the umpire that Quartararo claimed she was the victim, as the only female umpire in the ACL. Cooper said he told Bean Quartararo regularly used homophobic slurs and at one point physically shoved him. He also claims that he has video evidence, texts and emails to prove his claim.
But he said his complaints to Major League Baseball officials were ignored. His lawsuit said MLB passed him over for the playoffs and fired him in October. He said of the 26 umpires hired with Cooper, he was the only one let go.
Through a spokesperson, MLB declined to comment on pending litigation. Quartararo has also not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
Sports
Brittney Griner, wife expecting first child
WNBA star released from Russian gulag in December 2022
One year after returning to the WNBA after her release from a Russian gulag and declaring, “I’m never playing overseas again,” Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner and her wife announced they have something even bigger coming up this summer.
Cherelle, 31, and Brittney, 33, are expecting their first child in July. The couple shared the news with their 715,000 followers on Instagram.
“Can’t believe we’re less than three months away from meeting our favorite human being,” the caption read, with the hashtag, #BabyGrinerComingSoon and #July2024.
Griner returned to the U.S. in December 2022 in a prisoner swap, more than nine months after being arrested in Moscow for possession of vape cartridges containing prescription cannabis.
In April 2023, at her first news conference following her release, the two-time Olympic gold medalist made only one exception to her vow to never play overseas again: To return to the Summer Olympic Games, which will be played in Paris starting in July, the same month “Baby Griner” is due. “The only time I would want to would be to represent the USA,” she said last year.
Given that the unrestricted free agent is on the roster of both Team USA and her WNBA team, it’s not immediately clear where Griner will be when their first child arrives.
The Griners purchased their “forever home” in Phoenix just last year.
“Phoenix is home,” Griner said at the Mercury’s end-of-season media day, according to ESPN. “Me and my wife literally just got a place. This is it.”
As the Los Angeles Blade reported last December, Griner is working with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts — like Griner, a married lesbian — on an ESPN television documentary as well as a television series for ABC about her life story. Cherelle is executive producer of these projects.
Next month, Griner’s tell-all memoir of her Russian incarceration will be published by Penguin Random House. It’s titled “Coming Home” and the hardcover hits bookstores on May 7.
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