In the world of professional sports, where a neanderthalic culture permeates through the inside of most locker rooms as front offices strain themselves to the point of turning red in the face to maintain a politically correct community persona outside of them, it’s rare to see both facets of any team coming together to take a stand on a controversial issue. Especially one that might ruffle a couple of feathers.
Usually there’s a rogue player who might declare his support for a certain politician or accidentally reveal his true thoughts about a certain group of people. These are the moments that tend to prematurely gray the hair of media relations staffers forced to scramble to distribute a mea culpa to the media in order to prevent any further damage to the organizational facade, lest the stance in question causes a season ticketholder or two decide not to renew.
Which is why it was so refreshing and so rare to see an iconic franchise like the Chicago Cubs taking a very public stand recently with a couple of gestures designed to show the organization’s support for the city’s thriving LGBT (that’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender for the handful of you who didn’t know that) community.
The team recently became the second professional sports team to film an “It Gets Better” video, designed to support nationally syndicated columnist Dan Savage’s groundbreaking project taking a stand against anti-LGBT bullying. Days later, the team was flying the rainbow flag yet again, marching in Chicago’s annual Pride Parade. While there weren’t any players present, the team did send a fair amount of team representatives. It’s also worth noting that the Cubs were the only professional sports team in a city lousy with them to send a representative.
While these two gestures might seem small in the grand scheme of things, especially for a team that plays its games just blocks away from a thriving neighborhood known as Boystown, in reality they aren’t.
That the Cubs are taking such a public stand in favor of gay rights is unfortunately a rare thing in the world of sports today. Every now and again, you’ll have a guy like Sean Avery stand up and speak his mind on the issue. To this day though, “gay” is still a derogatory term around most stadiums. The six-letter f-word is used far too frequently to describe opposing players or – even more puzzling – players on the home team who aren’t performing up to the lofty standards of some lifetime B-teamer who wouldn’t dare say something similar were he to meet said player on the street.
Rarely do you see a united effort like the one being put forth by the Cubs to show their LGBT fanbase that not only does the team want their business, but the team itself wants to play a role in the LGBT community.
Team owner Laura Ricketts has been leading the charge herself, telling MLB.com’s Alex Ruppenthal “For young kids to see [Cubs players and coaches] telling them to be true to themselves and to hang in there and to seek out help and that we celebrate who they are regardless of their sexual orientation, I think [that] can make a world of difference to a kid who’s struggling and maybe can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel.”
Say what you will about the other moves the Ricketts family has made since taking over the Cubs, but in this case Laura Ricketts is exactly right. And it is the exact reason why more teams – not just in MLB but in the NFL, NBA, NHL, even the niche leagues – need to be taking a similar stand.
Understand that I’m speaking as a vocal heterosexual supporter of gay rights myself who covered the first legal gay weddings that took place in Iowa back in 2009. But the reality is this – homophobia has no more of a place in the 21st century than racism. The LGBT community has been making positive contributions to modern society, and have shown that just because they don’t fit in to traditional social mores doesn’t mean they’re bad people or worthy of scorn in any way, shape or form.
If nothing else, more teams and players need to be following the Cubs lead in preaching a message of acceptance. While we have yet to see an active player come out of the closet, it’s only a matter of time given that statistics show there are in fact homosexuals who excel on sports’ biggest stages. In the meantime, taking baby steps – supporting the It Gets Better campaign, speaking at LGBT events, even marching in a parade – to take a stand like the Cubs have done helps drum up the groundswell of support needed for an athlete to eventually admit to the world that he is in fact different from his teammates when it comes to his sexual preference.
And honestly, that’s okay. If one of my favorite athletes were to come out of the closet tomorrow, I wouldn’t think of him any differently than if he told me he enjoyed strawberry ice cream instead of chocolate. Because this is the 21st century and people are different from one another. Instead of denying that, we should be embracing it.
Post Author: matthewmlindner.
