Sports
A timeline of progress in U.S. sports
Looking back on influential coming out stories since 1975
(From left) Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Billy Bean and Seimone Augustus (King photo by Andrew Coppa Photography, Navratilvoa photo by Michael Key, Bean photo by David Vance, Augustus photo by Danny Karwoski)
This timeline reflects the highlights of professional U.S. athletes who have come out in the most popular American sports based on reports in various news media outlets, including OutSports. It is not a definitive list of all athletes that have come out, but experts consider those identified here to have had an important impact in paving the way for more LGBT athletes to come out.
1975: David Kopay, an NFL player with the Washington Redskins, San Francisco 49ers and other teams, comes out as gay shortly after retiring from football. He becomes the first known NFL player, active or retired, to openly discuss his sexual orientation — first with the news media and later in his 1977 bestselling book, “The David Kopay Story: An Extraordinary Self-Revelation.”
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1976: Ophthalmologist and tennis player Dr. Renee Richards is outed as a transgender woman when the U.S. Tennis Association refused to allow her to play in the U.S. Open on grounds that she was born as a male and could not compete against women. She challenged the denial in court and won her case the following year, enabling her to become the first known transgender person to play in a professional sport.
1981: Billie Jean King, the nationally acclaimed tennis star, was outed by her ex-partner Marilyn Barnett in a palimony lawsuit. King said later that the disclosure that she was a lesbian resulted in her losing about $2 million in commercial endorsements from companies that dropped her immediately after learning she was gay.
1981: Martina Navratilova, the internationally acclaimed tennis star, willingly disclosed that she is a lesbian just months after the outing of Billie Jean King. Navratilova became the first big name professional athlete to come out of the closet during the height of her playing career. Although the tennis establishment for the most part supported her she later told the LGBT blog OutSports she lost as much as $10 million in endorsements from companies that spurned her because of her sexual orientation.
1988: Major League Baseball umpire Dave Pallone is fired by then Commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti, who cites unsubstantiated allegations that Pallone had sex with a minor. Although authorities in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., dropped an investigation into the allegations and in Pallone’s view exonerated him of any wrongdoing, the umpire said Giamatti and other baseball officials didn’t want him in baseball because he’s gay. In his 1990 book “Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball,” Pallone says his firing reinforced the perception that Major League Baseball would not allow gay players or umpires.
1992: Roy Simmons of the NFL, who played for the New York Giants and Washington Redskins in the 1980s, came out as gay in a TV interview on the “Phil Donahue Show,” several years after his football career ended.
1993: Then former Major League Baseball player Glen Burke came out publicly in 1993 in interviews in Sport magazine and NBC’s “Today” show. According to subsequent reports in the media, Burke came out to his fellow players and manager Tommy Lasorda when he played for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1970s. The Dodgers traded him to the Oakland A’s reportedly because top management feared news of Burke’s sexual orientation would become public, leading to negative publicity for the team. He is credited with being the first Major League Baseball player to come out to an entire team. Burke died of AIDS in 1995.
1996: Muffin Spencer-Devlin, a three-time tournament winner on the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour in the 1980s, came out as a lesbian in a March 1996 article in Sports Illustrated, becoming the first female or male professional golfer to come out while still playing.
1999: Major League Baseball player Billy Bean publicly disclosed he’s gay in 1999, four years after his baseball career ended. He began his Major League Baseball career in 1987 and played for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres. He wrote about his life as a closeted gay ball player in his 2003 book “Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life In and Out of Major League Baseball.”
2002: Esera Tuaolo, a defensive lineman for nine years in the NFL before retiring in 1999, came out as gay in a 2002 interview on ESPN. He became the third widely known NFL player to come out shortly after retiring. Like the other two – David Kopay (1975) and Roy Simmons (1992) – Tuaolo’s post-career coming out reinforced the longstanding belief that no NFL player could come out while still playing without facing dire consequences.
2005: Sheryl Swoopes, a seven-time Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) All-Star who was chosen three times as the league’s most valuable player, came out as a lesbian in 2005 at the height of her career. After being hailed as a role model for lesbians in sports, Swoopes startled LGBT basketball fans in 2010 when news surfaced that she ended her relationship with her female partner and announced she was engaged to marry a man. She has since retired from basketball and is head coach for the women’s basketball team at Loyola University in Chicago.
2007: John Amaechi, a professional basketball player who retired in 2003, came out as gay four years later, becoming the first player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) to come out, either during or after his playing days. His coming out was timed to coincide with the publication of his autobiography, “Man in the Middle.”
2011: Rick Welts, president of the Golden State Warriors, an NBA team, came out as gay in a New York Times interview in May 2011, becoming the first openly gay executive of the NBA and any of the other top U.S. professional sports. LGBT sports enthusiasts say Welts’ status as an out gay person in a high-level executive post in the professional sports world set a precedent for encouraging more pro sports executives as well as players to come out.
2012: Megan Rapinoe, a women’s U.S. professional soccer player with the Seattle Reign team and who is credited with helping the U.S. women’s national soccer team win a Gold Medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in England, came out as a lesbian in an interview with “Out” magazine. The sports blog SB Nation reported earlier this month Reign team officials will allow the internationally acclaimed soccer star to play for the French soccer team Lyon for the remainder of this year and next year, with the expectation that she will return to Seattle in June 2014.
2012: Seimone Augustus, considered a WNBA superstar with the Minnesota Lynx team, surfaced as an out lesbian and strong advocate for same-sex marriage when she backed the campaign to oppose a 2012 ballot measure in Minnesota to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution. After the defeat of the ballot measure, Augustus announced plans to marry her partner Lataya Varner in a Minnesota ceremony.
2013: Robbie Rogers, an American professional soccer player, startled the soccer establishment in February of this year by announcing he is gay and was retiring from soccer at age 25, ending his tenure as a member of England’s championship team Leads United. In May, Rogers changed his mind and was quickly snatched up by the Los Angeles Galaxy, making him the first openly gay professional men’s soccer player in the U.S. having the status of an active player.
2013: Brittney Griner, a star rookie on the WNBA team Phoenix Mercury, publicly disclosed she is gay in April of this year. She became the first woman’s professional basketball player to do so at the start of her professional career.
2013: Jason Collins, a professional basketball player who has played on six NBA teams since 2002, including the Washington Wizards, came out as gay in April of this year, becoming the first active athlete associated with one of the four major male team sports (basketball, football, baseball or hockey) to do so. His decision to come out drew widespread support from fellow athletes and fans, including from President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton. However, last month Collins became a free agent and is awaiting a contract with a team to continue playing in the NBA.
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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