The progress of LGBT+ roles in sports: her reflections and analysis

Lily Iserson

Contributing Writer

Upon attending Pat Griffin’s lecture my first impression of Griffin was that she clearly resembled a coach. More accurately, she resembled my idea of a coach. Still, because I was early, I was able to hear the last part of a talk tailored to Wooster athletes and team captains. I noticed that her tone possessed an energetic candor only a lifetime of conversation with students could afford.

I soon learned that Griffin was a professor emerita in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as the university’s former swim coach. Also a lifelong athlete, she joked, “In college I played DI basketball, field hockey and swimming at the University of Maryland – back when you could actually handle three DI sports.”

But she also identified as a lesbian, an aspect of her identity Griffin struggled with for years as a young woman due to the conservative, homophobic ideas that pervade sports culture. Since embracing her identity publicly, Griffin has dedicated her life to LGBT+ rights in every realm of athletics. She has published two books: Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbian and Homophobia in Sports and Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook for Teachers and Trainers. In addition, she runs a personal sports blog and conducts workshops across the country in order to bring the issue of homophobia in sports to the foreground.

Though she is recognized as a pioneer in raising awareness for LGBT+ athletes, she came across as humble and interested in preserving the well-being of young athletes above all else.

“I want to make sure no one has to go through that killing silence,” she said, reflecting on her years as a “closet” athlete. “I only want to give any LGBT+ athlete who can play, the chance to play.”

Speaking to a majority cisgendered heterosexual audience, Griffin was educational in tone. She gave a brief overview of the history of LGBT+ advocacy in sports, employing the metaphor of a night sky. Prior to 1970, as she explained it, the night was poorly lit. Few LGBT+ athletes could come out, and if they had, it was often in retirement or as a result of gossip.

Griffin slowly illuminated the acceptance of LGBT+ athletes; in recent years there have been long strides of progress made in the ’70s and ’80s leading to an explosion of progress in the 2000s. Recent years in activist work shone for the amount of awareness that had surfaced, and the fact that athletes who came out were able to remain active.

Though optimistic for the future, Griffin emphasized that many challenges remained. She described how large aspects of sports were still influenced by discriminatory, evangelical Christian values and a continued culture of coaches who abused their power.

She also mentioned the disproportionate focus the media and advocacy groups gave gay males in professional sports while K-12 and collegiate sports, women’s sports, as well as other spheres of gender and sexual identity were often ignored. She briefly touched upon the intersection of race and gender/sexual orientation (the experience of a black gay male and a white gay male were very different), as well as misconceptions associated around transgendered, intersex and gender-neutral athletes.

Still, as Griffin closed her presentation by quoting Martina Navratilova, a famed tennis player: “when the score is tied and there are two seconds left in the game, you don’t care if your teammate is black or white, Jew or Christian, gay or straight. You just want her to make the shot,” Griffin clearly wanted to leave a spirit of camaraderie in her audience.

Griffin never appeared disingenuous, only wanting to convey that when it comes to team sport, athletes play best when they feel safe.

As far as Griffin is concerned, pointing once to a picture of a night sky lit by a dozen explosions and fireworks with the title “2014+,” the future nonetheless looks bright.