ESPN Sports Analyst's Major Gaffe Shows How Backwards America Still Is on Gay Rights
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/straight-americas-gay-baggage
About four years before I came out as queer, a high school teacher asked our class how many of us would be comfortable changing in front of a gay person. I dont think anyone raised their hand. Im sure I didnt.
That squirmy high school moment came to mind when I saw ESPN analyst and ex-NFL player and coach Herm Edwards, in response to Michael Sams coming out, compare him to a player that has some issues, off the field issues whos bringing baggage into your locker room.
Im sure Edwards would insist hes no bigot, just as everybody in America insists theyre no bigot. But Edwards warning, if inartfully composed, offers an unintentionally elegant reminder of how heterosexism asserts and sustains itself. Not just through the bald fear and disgust we most often call homophobia (well-captured in the fear of predatory homosexuals invading the shower, as if straight bros locker room interactions were free of sexual surveillance, anxiety or bullying). But also through the insistence that anything other than normative heterosexuality is an issue, an event (maybe even an aggression), while straightness is unremarkable and un-remarked-upon. Its called straight for a reason.
The epic time and energy devoted to performing, asserting and enforcing heterosexuality (just watch a Super Bowl ad) goes hand-in-hand with the assumption that any individuals heterosexuality is a non-event. When projected first round NFL pick Manti Teo told reporters about his ( apparently mythical) girlfriend, Herm Edwards didnt accuse him of dragging his heterosexual baggage into the locker room. Thats the asymmetry at hand: Sams sexuality is noteworthy and suspect, while Teos relationship only became baggage when it was revealed as a hoax. Similarly, Proposition 8 Judge Vaughn Walker was accused of being unable, as a gay man, to rule fairly on gay marriage, whereas heterosexuality (or whiteness, or U.S. citizenship) doesnt get called out as a conflict of interest.
Sitting in that classroom back in high school, not yet having acknowledged to myself or intimated to anyone that I was anything other than straight, I took the lesson that being gay could make people afraid to share a locker room with you. But thinking back on it, Im mostly struck by the teachers comfort speaking as if everyone in the room was presumptively straight. Despite swift progress, heterosexuality remains largely omnipresent, assumed and therefore invisible. Deviation (be it claiming queerness or just actively questioning ones sexuality) comes at a cost like getting accused of dividing your team, or undermining your sport, by introducing your off the field issues. (Note that the NBAs Jason Collins, in coming out last year, wrote that hed held off during the season so as to not let my personal life become a distraction.)