Among the many controversies leading up to the XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, the host country’s record on gay rights took center stage. Although fears of gay athletes being arrested at the Games have, as expected, proved thus far to be superfluous, Russia’s practices have still fallen under reasonable scrutiny during this international spectacle.
Of course the host has not tried too hard to appease its critics. An Italian activist was briefly detained Monday and escorted from the Olympic park for shouting “It’s OK to be gay” while wearing rainbow-colored clothes, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile stateside, the issue of gays in sports is continuing to bubble up to the surface. Michael Sam, a University of Missouri football star and NFL prospect, told the New York Times and ESPN he was gay earlier this month. His announcement means he will likely become the NFL’s first openly gay player.
Sam’s announcement was met with predictable backlash. A series of NFL insiders told various media, mostly anonymously, that the league was not ready for Sam. Comments included those declaring Sam would be a “distraction” to whatever team he ends up on, those remarking that the slur-infested locker-room culture would be ill-equipped to adjust to a gay player, and the age-old homophobic fear that Sam will be sneaking peeks at his teammates’ privates in the showers.
All of these complaints, of course, are of little merit. They are, however, a good indicator of the challenges openly gay athletes face. Avery Stone, an openly gay women’s hockey player at Amherst College, recently detailed some of these struggles in an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled “For openly gay athletes, the US isn’t much more tolerant than Russia.” Stone wrote that even at a liberal arts college in Massachusetts’ leftist Pioneer Valley, she faced ignorance, slurs and harassment because of her sexuality.
Writer Tom Keane noted in a recent Boston Globe op-ed that laws in some American states are not much better than Russia’s anti-gay-propaganda law that has been the subject of much of the criticism towards Russia’s gay-rights records.
None of this is to suggest that Americans have no right to criticize Russia. The country’s record speaks for itself and defenders of rights should seek to defend those rights wherever they are violated. But Americans will be in a much better position to defend gay rights abroad when gays are treated as equals at home.
No one can expect Alabama to become a bastion of tolerance overnight, but like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, maybe it is time to get tough with states that refuse to enter the modern age. The energy spent lamenting over Russian policies might thus be better directed towards encouraging aggressive federal policies promoting the rights of all.
