Three years ago, a disagreement erupted on some ball fields just south of Seattle. The 2008 Gay Softball World Series was under way, an alternate universe of competitive sports that moves each year to a different city, bringing with it nearly 200 gay softball teams from across the United States and Canada, as well as thousands of spectators. Drag queens rally the fans. Shouts of “Giiiiirrrl” carry across the grass. Guys with their arms draped over other guys stand in the dugout, next to women with biceps bigger than their own.
It’s serious competition, with all the usual intensity and emotion—including, in 2008, suspicions of cheating.
For the Seattle world series, the San Francisco Gay Softball Association, one of the oldest gay softball clubs in the United States, sent a team that called itself D2. They’d been together for some time, but so far the best they’d ever done at the Gay Softball World Series was place fourth. LaRon Charles, a short, scrappy, goateed military veteran, was serving as the team’s coach. As he would later recount in court documents, he and his team decided early on that in order to win, they would need to push themselves “harder than we ever had.”
Down in San Francisco, during the regular season, D2 added practices on weekdays for the first time in the team’s history. Players traveled to weekend tournaments to get in top form. The club held fundraisers to defray hotel and airfare costs for getting people to Seattle.
The work paid off. On August 30, 2008, having sailed through the early rounds of competition at the Seattle Gay Softball World Series, D2 found itself in the semifinals. Their opponents were the Atlanta Mudcats, and they beat them in a blowout, 23–3.
There was just one game left: a championship match against the Los Angeles Vipers.
The night before that final game, rumors began to swirl.
D2 was cheating, the rumors went, and doing so in a way that is unique to the world of organized gay sports.
The accusation, which ended up spawning a federal lawsuit that could change the way gay sports are played around the country, was simple and yet very hard to prove: D2 was fielding too many heterosexual players.
The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, which puts on the Gay Softball World Series, was founded in the 1970s by gay players in San Francisco and New York seeking to promote a safe and separate space for gay softball. The group has a long history of limiting the number of straight people allowed on the field during world series play; in the organization’s early years, straight people weren’t allowed on the field, period.
Which is not to say that many straight players wanted in. This was the 1970s and 1980s, after all.
It wasn’t until 1993, as hardened cultural animosities toward gays were beginning to crack, that the flat-out ban on straight people loosened. “The rationale for changing the rule,” said NAGAAA commissioner Roy Melani, “was that we now had advocates in the straight community. Plus, we also had family members, whether it be sons or parents, who wanted to play.”
A new rule was adopted: Two straight players per team were allowed during the Gay Softball World Series.
Melani and I were seated across the table from each other at Scandals, a gay bar in Portland, as he told me about this evolution. He’s 51 and trim, and wore a purple striped dress shirt. He pitches for a gay team known as the Portland Brewers, and he apologized in advance for the way he speaks—explosive emotion, chopping hand gestures—saying it’s a combination of his passion for gay sports and his Italian heritage. His lawyer, Roger Leishman of Seattle’s Davis Wright Tremaine, sat next to him, listening closely.
Melani told me right up front that playing against straight teams in the Portland city leagues has convinced him it’s important to have a cap on straight players for NAGAAA’s premier annual event.
“The amount of slurs and the amount of abuse that we take—in Portland, Oregon!—is amazing,” he told me. “Last year, we arrive to play against another team, and the umpire says, ‘Oh, here come the crossdressers.'” On the field, he’s heard opposing players call out “Faggot!” or “You throw like a girl!”
“Meanwhile,” Melani said, “we beat the shit out of these guys.”
He went on: “There was one time, a few years ago, where we split a double header with a straight team—they were ready to take baseball bats and come to blows because we were gay. Mind you, my team was not out there hugging and kissing everybody. That was not what we were doing. We were playing softball. And we were beating them. And that was a problem for them.”
This is one of the many hard-to-duplicate experiences that come with playing on a gay sports team, this opportunity to humble—and enrage—straight people who aren’t used to gays being good at sports. It’s a reminder that, to make the clichéd metaphor literal, the playing field still isn’t even. Even in our quickly shifting culture, gay people still face discrimination and hostility, still spend a certain amount of time crisscrossing the divide between explicitly queer spaces and dominantly heterosexual spaces. Partly because of this, for many in the gay community there’s still a powerful pull toward moments, like the Gay Softball World Series, in which that kind of divide-crossing gets put on extended pause.
The problem comes—as NAGAAA is now finding out in federal court—when a group of people tries to defend queer space by enforcing a limit on exactly how many non-gay people can be included.
In Seattle, figuring out who had a right to be included involved a kind of tribunal, with players being hauled before a “protest committee” to answer pointed questions.
All the suspicion made a competitive atmosphere even more charged. “In the first innings of the championship game, we were playing well,” LaRon Charles, the D2 coach, recounted in a March declaration to the court. Then, suddenly, the game was stopped for a discussion of the fact that D2 was being officially protested based on the allegation that it had too many straight players. Charles went on:
The game resumed, and we were leading the Vipers by about 10 runs when play was stopped again in the third inning. Again, there was a discussion about the protest against our team. Then the game resumed. This happened at least one more time… People had started coming up to our dugout asking questions about different players and what their names and jersey numbers were… Between the interruptions and the buzz growing in the park about our team being protested, we lost focus and lost our momentum. We ended up losing the championship game, 31 to 28.
What happened next is at the heart of the federal lawsuit, filed in April of last year by the National Center for Lesbian Rights on behalf of Charles and two other D2 players who were brought before the tribunal.
NCLR lawyers allege that at the tribunal, Charles and the two other D2 members had their privacy unlawfully invaded and were illegally discriminated against based on their sexual orientation and race. (All three plaintiffs are “men of color,” according to court documents.) The NCLR is demanding unspecified monetary damages for the “emotional distress” suffered by its clients—described in court documents as “vivid flashbacks,” “loss of sleep,” and feelings of “humiliation, embarrassment, and anger”—plus a nationwide injunction against enforcement of the two-straight-players-per-team limit at the Gay Softball World Series. “Nobody should be put into a situation where they’re marched into a room and forced to answer questions about their sexuality,” said Chris Stoll, the NCLR’s senior staff attorney.
This is the first time the NCLR has ever sued another gay group. It’s taken the unusual step, in part, because it has a profoundly different sense of the current culture—and what’s required to defend gay space—than Melani’s organization does.
“These rules are a legacy of an older time,” Stoll said, speaking of the two-straight-
players-per-team cap at the Gay Softball World Series. “Given how much progress we’ve made, they seem kind of antiquated. Today, a rule that limits participation based on sexual orientation just isn’t necessary to have in a gay sports league, or any kind of gay-friendly space.”
The disagreement is bigger than just this lawsuit. Across the world of gay sports, there is wide divergence on how to handle straight players.
This summer, Vancouver, BC, will play host to the North America Outgames, an Olympics-style competition involving gay teams competing against each other in soccer, swimming, hockey, volleyball, running, mountain biking, badminton, golf, poker, and, yes, softball. The Outgames makes an explicit point of not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation—meaning straight players and teams are theoretically welcome. That’s a very different policy than at the Gay Softball World Series or in the National Gay Flag Football League, which also limits the number of straight players allowed on a team to 20 percent.
This kind of protective discrimination is not unique to gay sports. According to court documents, the Black American Softball Association allows just four “non-black” players per team and demands birth certificates as proof of race; the Native American World Series has a cap of two non-Native softball players per team and requires players to carry “Indian identification”; and the SMASH Softball Tournament for Asian/Pacific Islanders allows only three non-API players and requires “proof of ethnicity.”
The 2008 tribunal, Charles recounted in his court declaration, “was held in a small conference room inside a complex at the park.” All the D2 players waited outside as, one by one, their teammates were brought before a panel composed of leaders in the national gay softball association. Accounts of what followed differ considerably between the plaintiffs and the defendants, but Charles said in his declaration that “more than 25 people were crowded into the small hearing room” and that “the atmosphere felt like a circus.”
According to Charles and his fellow plaintiffs, people inside the hearing room were texting private information to people outside while the questioning was taking place. “When I came out of the hearing room, people I didn’t even know were making comments about my marriage and other things we said in the hearing,” Charles said. (He is married to a woman.)
Meanwhile, the hearing itself seemed to have incomprehensible and shifting standards for how to prove one’s sexuality. Bisexuality, in this recounting of events, was not sufficient evidence to convince the members of the tribunal that a person was not heterosexual.
“Someone on the Protest Committee read me NAGAAA’s definition of ‘heterosexual,'” said Steven Apilado, one of the challenged D2 players, in a March declaration to the court. “I was asked whether it defined me, and I said yes. Then someone on the Protest Committee read me NAGAAA’s definition of ‘homosexual,’ and I was asked whether that definition defined me. I said yes to that question, too.”
Apilado, who is African American and Filipino, had been introduced to the gay softball world when his brother invited him to play on his team. He was ruled “non-gay” by the tribunal and claims that until the hearing, “I had never disclosed my sexual orientation to anybody.”
Charles, who is African American, said that when he, too, professed bisexuality, one of the NAGAAA board members in the room told him, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.” Multiple votes were taken with regard to Charles’s sexuality, he said, and “on the final vote, I was voted to be ‘not gay.'”
John Russ, another of the challenged D2 players, refused to answer the tribunal’s questions. “I didn’t want them getting into my personal business,” he explained in court documents.
Russ is African American. Just like the other men of color brought before the tribunal, he was ruled “non-gay.” Curiously, Russ said, another D2 player—a player who is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit—was questioned by the tribunal and refused to answer. That player is white and was ruled “gay.”
What was the racial makeup of the tribunal? “All but one of NAGAAA’s protest committee members were Caucasian,” according to court documents filed by the NCLR. Leishman, the lawyer for Melani and NAGAAA, said there were five committee members, four men and one woman. One of the men was Asian and the rest were Caucasian.
All five committee members have been offended by the suggestion that racism played any part in the proceedings, Leishman said, contending that they made their decisions based only on “the demeanor of the individuals”—meaning, Leishman said, “which ones seemed evasive and not forthright.”
“By the time the voting was over, I was extremely upset,” Russ said. “I raised my hand and I asked how they could ask me these few questions and determine what my sexuality is. Nobody responded.”
With three of D2’s players now ruled “non-gay,” the team was retroactively disqualified from the Seattle Gay Softball World Series and forced to forfeit its second-place trophy.
“I felt like we had gotten hit by a train,” Charles said.
“I started to cry as we were leaving the complex,” said Apilado. “I didn’t want this to end there.”
It did not end there, and Melani now hotly disputes the plaintiffs’ recounting of what went on that day. “First of all,” he told me, “I want to say: They were not treated poorly in any way, shape, or form.”
They certainly feel that way, I told him.
“I know that,” he said. “But you need to hear the other side of the story. This is a really hot button for me. They are at the Gay World Series. Is it unreasonable for someone to say, ‘Are you gay?’ at the Gay World Series? It is not.”
Even so, did this particular line of “Are you gay?” questioning go a bit off the rails?
“They have said that this is a kangaroo court that they were brought in front of,” Melani replied. “In no way, shape, or form was it done like that.”
Central to Melani’s account is his contention that the D2 players never said at the hearing that they were bisexual. “If they’d have said that,” he told me, “we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
At the time, the policies of NAGAAA allowed bisexual players to play in the Gay Softball World Series and not be counted as straight, said Leishman, admitting, “Some people seem to have been confused.”
But he contends that no one with a vote on the tribunal was confused, nor did any of the voting members make any statement about it being “the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.”
In any case, Leishman said, the gay softball association’s policies have now been clarified. Bisexuals are even more explicitly allowed to play in the world series—as are lesbians, transgender people, and limited numbers of straight people—and the way the organization determines a person’s sexuality is simple: self-declaration. “We don’t have cards, we don’t have pink triangles, and no one’s gaydar is perfect,” said Leishman. “All you can do is ask.”
Stoll, of the NCLR, isn’t sold.
“It’s hard to understand what’s particularly important about the magic number of capping it at two heterosexual players,” he said. “And the real problem is that any way you try to enforce a cap like this is going to have real, devastating consequences. Just look at what happened to the guys in this case.”
Plus, what about the cap’s implication that a gay team can’t—
Melani cut me off.
“Don’t misconstrue,” he said.
“But you know what I’m going to ask.”
“I know exactly what you’re going to ask,” he said.
“Okay, let me just ask it, just for the formality of it: Are you saying that a gay team can’t beat a straight team?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that they have, and that’s breaking down the barriers of sports.”
Still, Melani feels there’s a place for that kind of majority-gay versus majority-straight competition, and a place for majority-gay versus majority-gay competition—and the Gay Softball World Series is the latter.
After his trip through the tribunal, Charles came away with a very different impression.
“I felt, and still feel, offended that someone would think that having players who were voted by a group of strangers to be ‘non-gay’ would make the difference in whether we win or lose,” he said. “A straight player is no better than I am.”
A trial is set for June in Seattle before US District Court judge John C. Coughenour. One of the more interesting legal questions that lawyers are preparing to debate is whether the Gay Softball World Series, as it manifested itself in Seattle, constituted a “public accommodation.” The phrase is important because it connects to Washington State’s nondiscrimination law, which is designed, for example, to prevent people from being denied access to a water fountain because of their race or kicked out of a business establishment because of their sexual orientation.
As we were sitting at Scandals, Leishman pointed out: “This is a public accommodation.” His message was that if the bar were located in Washington State, a person couldn’t be denied entry because of his or her race or sexual orientation.
In court filings, the NCLR has argued that the Seattle Gay Softball World Series was a public accommodation (it was played on public fields and advertised widely) and that by denying “non-gay” people the ability to participate, NAGAAA violated the state’s nondiscrimination law.
Leishman, returning to his example, explained that essentially what the NCLR is demanding here is not just the right for anyone to enter a gay bar regardless of race or sexual orientation, but also the right for anyone to leap over the bar and start pouring beer for customers. At the 2008 Gay Softball World Series, anyone could buy a ticket regardless of race or sexual orientation, but not everyone was allowed on the field. “You can’t just walk off the street and pick up a bat and start playing on a team,” Leishman said.
Additionally, Leishman argues, the group that puts on the Gay Softball World Series is a private organization—like, say, the Boy Scouts of America, which explicitly excludes homosexuals and in 2000 successfully fought all the way to the US Supreme Court to defend its right, as a private organization, to do so. It just so happens that NAGAAA discriminates in the opposite direction.
Melani, frustrated by a sense that his group has been unfairly singled out, challenges the NCLR to be consistent. Why, Melani asks, has the NCLR not also filed suit against lesbian softball teams that allow only women, or taken some of the race- and ethnicity-based softball competitions to court?
“Are rules like that possibly illegal?” Stoll asked in response. “I think it’s entirely possible.”
Talk to Melani about his path into the world of gay softball, and it quickly becomes clear why a safe space for gay players is so important to him.
It begins with a flashback to high school, which is common: Adult gay athletes are competing not just against their on-field opponents, but also against the memories of what happened to them back then. Craig Kelly, the coach of the Seattle Quake rugby team, sees this all the time in new players, many of whom have never before played organized sports. “In high school, they probably weren’t encouraged to be athletes,” Kelly said. “They were probably singled out as nonathletic when they were younger. Or maybe their own desires were growing—you don’t want to pop wood in the shower.” Michael Coleman, who runs Jet City Hoops, Seattle’s gay basketball league, sees the same thing. “They were either the last person picked on a team, or not picked way back when, and they just want to come out and be a part of that now,” he said. “There’s obviously a comfort level if you’re with other gay people and other people at your skill level.” Plus, he said, “You can say to your fellow players, ‘That guy’s kinda hot.'”
“I played football, I played basketball, and I played baseball,” Melani said of his high school years. He was good, and no one knew he was gay, though Melani was beginning to wonder.
He also was beginning to observe how gay men who had a harder time masking their homosexuality were treated. “I remember,” Melani said, “when we were in gym class, and there were a couple guys I knew were gay. You just know. And the poor guys were the last ones picked. And I remember some sense of ‘If I could make a difference in that situation…'”
I asked whether a kind of survivor’s guilt—a guilt at being able to pass as straight and thrive in the world of high school sports—was behind Melani’s later involvement in the world of gay softball.
“It may well have been,” he said.
If his gay softball association hadn’t had insurance against lawsuits like the one the NCLR is bringing, Melani said, “we would be defunct.” The pretrial legal bills alone would have sunk NAGAAA.
But there’s another money issue that Melani now worries about: If, as a result of this legal fight, the purity of the gay demographic at the Gay Softball World Series is diluted by court order, will NAGAAA still be able to receive lucrative sponsorships from gay-targeting beer companies and the like, the kind of sponsorships that make the event possible?
Adding frustration to his fears, Melani said that one of the men who’s suing NAGAAA over its cap on straight players has himself been playing in the SMASH Softball Tournament for Asian/Pacific Islanders—that’s the tournament that sets a cap of three non-API players per team and requires “proof of ethnicity.”
Interestingly, all the parties involved seem to think that someday there will no longer be a need to fight in federal court over how to defend this country’s gay sports space.
The sticking point is just whether that day is in the future or right now.
Jeff Card, commissioner of the Emerald City Softball Association, which oversees 35 gay softball teams in Seattle, told me: “My view is that eventually this cap on straight players will probably go by the wayside, anyway. It’s just a matter of when. If there’s any judicial action, it would have the effect of simply speeding up the outcome.”
During the regular season, Seattle’s gay softball teams don’t enforce the cap—and aren’t required to by NAGAAA. A good number of straight players participate, some because they simply find gay sports teams more supportive and fun than straight teams. However, Seattle’s gay softball teams are required to enforce the cap when sending teams to the Gay Softball World Series. And the Seattle association has repeatedly used its vote at national board meetings to uphold the world series cap because, Card said, the experiences of gay softball teams in less tolerant cities—”like Tulsa and Oklahoma City”—make a cap on straight players at the world series “a lot more pertinent.”
When I told Melani and Leishman that the lawyer for the NCLR had called the cap on straight players “a legacy of an older time,” Leishman quickly shot back:
“Maybe it is in San Francisco.”
Melani immediately added:
“Not in Birmingham, Alabama, or Memphis, Tennessee.”
Both are places with gay softball teams that need a separate space for gay sports far more than, say, major coastal urban centers. Melani continued: “It would be wonderful to say that we live in a world with no discrimination, and that gay men and women are free to marry and be without discrimination in a job—it’s not the reality that we’re living in. And until that changes, that’s the basis of what we need. Especially in sports. You tell me one Major League Baseball player who is out and proud, and I’ll give you a million dollars.”
I asked: When I can tell you one Major League Baseball player who is out and proud, will you declare mission accomplished and shut down the Gay Softball World Series?
“Yes,” he said. 
Setting aside the ridiculous policing of another person’s sexual expression, isn’t it a GOOD thing that “straight” players would want to join a gay team? Are these idiots seriously suggesting that the kinds of “straight” people would would want to join a gay team are exactly the kinds of straight people who yell slurs at them on the field? A straight is a straight is a straight, right?
And I also find it ridiculous that the Bona Fide Gays were sooooooo upset that their decisions could be construed as racist. Their instant outrage at the suggestion that their decisions certainly LOOK biased (please, as though anyone could look at that decision and not have it cross their mind) says to me that these queers are not being honest with themselves about it. Like closet cases, they seem to be in denial about something which is pretty suggestive to everyone else. Not saying these dudes would, say, burn crosses or anything, but I’d bet they are tossing some n-words to each other about these players for not shutting up about all this. Just saying.
As I read this, I just kept substituting “Negro League Baseball” for “Gay Softball”, and “white” for “straight”, and it got silly really quick.
It may still be a few years off, but that gay Jackie Robinson dude is probably going to be a hell of a player and an incredible person.
Maybe then, we can look back and think how silly something like a gay sports league is.
This sure makes me not want to play softball.
Thanks Eli, for the most cogent balanced presentation of the sticky issues surrounding this lawsuit. As an active member of the ECSA in Seattle, it’s a shame that we’re somewhat tarnished with the publicity from this suit (because the actions took place during our year hosting the national tournament), even though it was not the Seattle league that made the challenged decisions. It will be an interesting trial to follow.
I agree with the first comment, it is silly to prevent straight people from joining a gay team. In fact, it is counterproductive. If what you are really trying to do is change the culture, then maybe having say, Ken Griffey Jr. join a team would be great. Besides, it is a bit like the historically black colleges and universities. If you are white, you can go to Howard. You might feel a bit out of place, or, depending on your background, you might feel right at home.
At worst, the gay players get crowded out by straight people, so that only the best of the gay players can play. But isn’t that what folks want, but in the major leagues? In fact, isn’t it what we already have, just with less openness (hell — I’m tempted to out one of those guys, just to collect the million bucks)? If a “gay” league transforms itself into a “gay acceptance” league, and then proceeds to challenge and beat the crap out of a tradition league, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Seems this article in general is too long by a factor of three. Editor, please step in and revise.
My sentiments exactly.
Eli, nice to see this look at a compelling aspect of gay sports and, in particular, gay sports leagues.
As a decade-long participant in the local gay soccer scene, I’ve heard dozens of different reasons from teammates for why they are attracted to play in a gay league. Many of them are certainly “good enough” to play in the highest levels of general league play…but they choose to keep at least one foot in the gay league.
Why? For some it’s nurturing. For some it’s like a living Grindr with shin-pads. For others, it’s a fitness thing. Or maybe, it’s all the above…and then some.
As differing as the reasons are, there seems to be a near-universal consistency around simply finding comfort in one’s own tribe.
Of course, as intuitively warm and fuzzy as that sentiment sounds on the surface, it is inarguably one of the the foothills of a slippery slope that can ultimately manifest in male-only, white-only — or woman-only, black-only — institutions that are more energized by who they exclude rather than who they embrace. And where collegial transforms into bigoted, we must act against it.
But I don’t think the bunch of nice gay guys I play with every week have a nefarious purpose in mind when they take the pitch. And, frankly, the few straights who show up to play with us are always welcomed as allies…and objects of extreme curiosity. What, one wonders, is the REAL reason these straight guys are here? The mind wanders…
I wish there was a way these assemblies of like-minded folks could be left to thrive, so long as their purpose was constructive. The problem is, no one can agree what that word “constructive” seems to mean, and there is a legacy of exclusion and discrimination among certain affinity organizations so deep that there is never likely to be an easy solution.
In the end, for me, being part of a gay league is a chance to throw weighty cares like those in your article to the winds and, for 90 minutes, do something social, healthy and uplifting with 21 other of my gay brothers.
SPAM ON AISLE 10! SPAM ON AISLE 10!!!
The problem of too many straight guys in gay sports is a great problem to have and a sign of the times if you ask me.
I would say it’s in places where there the most homophobia – like Birmingham or Memphis that you’d most want to encourage that kind of mixing of gay and gay friendly men, and it would be very unlikely you’d have a ‘ringer’ team in that environment.
This reminds me a little bit of all the straight people, especially women, who come to gay bars, often brought there by their gay male friends.
At one level, I get it. The gay guy who brought them is too insecure to cruise by himself, and doesn’t have enough gay friends to come out with. The women want to go out, but for one reason or another don’t want get hit on.
At another level it really pisses me off. Look, girls, most of the guys in that bar are there because they want to meet other dudes. You get in the way, and not just physically. You ruin the vibe; you are the graphite rods in the nuclear reactor. Get the fuck out.
And to you, the gay dude who brought them, what the fuck were you thinking? It’s not as if the rest of us are all that confident either. But if you’re too much of a chickenshit to cruise for guys on your own lonesome, then would you kindly take your girlfriends somewhere else? We’ve got some work to do here, and you kill the vibe.
The other issue, with both gay bars and gay athletic teams, is that there’s a well-known pattern. First, a few “cool straights” are there, usually because their own places are such soul-crushing disasters that they feel a need to be a remorra fish on someone else’s vibe.
Over time, more and more straights come, and they’re not as cool anymore. Eventually, you check a dude out and he says, “What you lookin’ at, faggot?” I’ve seen it happen, and without those rules for the athletic teams, their gay identity will be lost within 10 years, or maybe sooner.
Straight people, we welcome your tolerance and acceptance. We really do. But please stay away from our bars, even if your gay friend invites you, and don’t try to join our teams unless you decide that you’re playin’ for our team, if ya catch my drift.
p.s.: Straights, for every gay person who welcomes you in our spaces, there are several who your presence make them feel uncomfortable. We are not all one big happy family in all places, at all times. There are a few places where most of us want to be with each other.
Please try to understand that. Believe me, no matter how cool you think the straight world has become, there are all kinds of places where we keep things quite low-key. Having our own places lets us exhale. We still need that. Thanks.
The one question I kept asking myself while reading this is do we want to really make being gay something you must prove? I think I could live with the knowledge that people want to play in a gay softball league and they may not be gay.
I see this as being kind of similar to the Race for the Cure. Back in the day, when I still ran it, it was a women’s-only race, and it was awesome. It had a completely different feel to it than your typical road race and I really looked forward to it. But eventually, the guys said, “hey, our mothers and sisters and wives and sometimes even we get breast cancer and we should be allowed in the main event too.” Well, I guess I could see their point, but it killed the event for me. I will always be an ally to my gay friends, but sometimes being a good ally is recognizing when a group of people needs something that just belongs to them. In this case, I think the best ally would go and cheer for their favorite gay team and then buy them a beer after.
What @13 & @14 said…do a lot of guys feel that way? I’ve certainly been guilty of that (going to gay bars to dance) with my friends. I felt welcomed by the guys who danced with us, but…were there a bunch of other people wishing we weren’t there? It’s something I wondered about at the time, and I’d like to know how many people feel that way, if straight women really shouldn’t ever go to gay bars?
oooookay, mr. g., i will definitely stay out of any and all gay bars. and i will not patronize gay businesses (can’t have those nasty straight people in our stores). i am also no longer donating money to gay organizations, because i don’t want to taint their cause with my heterosexual money. so, thank you, Mr. G., for opening my mind and making me realize that the reason i was asked to leave a committee on a local LGBT organization wasn’t because i was incompetent, but because i was the wrong sexual orientation! now i feel so bad because of all the discomfort i caused to my fellow committee members!
well, i’m sure i won’t be missed at all, and i can sleep at night knowing i did the right thing and that the LGBT community can breathe a sigh of relief now that i’m no longer donating money or consorting with them.
How does one prove they are gay? Doe you have to have one of the ‘stereotypes’?
@13 Oh Mary. A gay at a bar surely has to be going to a bar for the exclusive reason of Cruising, and not to socialize with people. No, all gay bars are pick-up places exclusively. Gay bars can never have a Cheers-esque attitude because, in gay world, Norm would be picking up a different person every night and ignoring everybody else.
Gay bars have a duty to be havens against prejudice, but not against the whole outside world. If a gay brings his very accepting straight friend to have a drink with on his turf, that’s fine. But, on the other hand, I do have more issues with gaggles of insulatory straights using the gay bar to seem hip or cool, or to feel safe while at the same time treating gays like extras at their own bar.
Gay sports leagues, on the other hand, WERE created for the exclusive right of protecting and shielding gays from the outside world. And, having straight guys vie for a position can start to feel like getting picked last on the field for that really hot straight guy…AGAIN. The gay sports leagues allow straights to support their gay friends as spectators, but not as participants. And, I’m fine with that. It’s not about ability or ringers…it’s about safe spaces and insulation.
The idea that some areas of the country are hostile towards gays, and therefore non-hostile straights shouldn’t be allowed to participate is ludicrous. For one – don’t hold the World Series in hostile territory. And for two – show folks that hey – gay men aren’t trying to convert straight men, and we can all get along and play some damned softball.
As another ECSA member (Throttle to the Bottle!!!), I can say that straight folks on our teams don’t have an adverse effect on game play. And, if anything, the worst comments come from other gays (never me, of course).
NAGAA’s rule is discriminatory, plain and simple. And to defend it with the Boy Scouts case, as I recall NAGAA doing when this story first broke last year, is moronic. Just because the Courts have said discrimination in private organizations is okay doesn’t make it okay, and dammit, we’re better than this.
And great piece, Sanders. Long…very long…but there’s a lot to take in. Thanks for following up on this!
NAGAAA, please!
We’re here, we’re queer, get off our field!
Competition really brings out the best in humanity.
There is more to this than the “straights play better” myth. That shouldn’t even be considered.
This comes down to the level of acceptance and the atmosphere provided by having a cap. I have seen straight players both on and off the field that are ok being on a gay league when they are winning, but you can see and hear the homophobia/heterosexism come out when the straight player is frustrated/angry.
On a bigger scale, a problem can occur not only on a player-by-player basis, but by a team-by-team basis. I have witnessed in the gay soccer league, which as far as my knowledge does not have a cap, teams made of mostly of straight players that join the gay league and then throw their personalities around on the field and harass the other gay teams.
I understand the sentiment that “if straights want to play on a gay league, isn’t that a level of progress that should be welcomed with open arms?” but the truth of it is that not all straight people want to play on the gay leagues for the right reason nor have a strong enough handle on their homophobia/heterosexism to be in situations of high competition and adrenaline.
The Quake Rugby Club, a team started for gay players, is a team mixed with gay and straight players that play in a predominantly gay league. The homophobia/heterosexism demonstrated by the other teams is unfounded at times, and it affects the straight players of the Quake as well. So while it’s awesome that the Quake Rugby Club is made up of such amazing people that they can play together without discrimination, it shows that even the most accepting of situations can turn ugly quick.
I will agree that the tribunal style is a bit extreme. I will point out again that this does not reflect the Seattle-based ECSA, but the national-based NAGAA that runs the Gay World Series. But unlike the race- or gender-based leagues, a sexuality-based league cannot determine eligible players by sight, and so there would have to be a more personal process to determine eligibility.
@14 I find your comment interesting. I wonder if a straight individual were to ask that homosexuals not visit a predominantly heterosexual haven how long it would take for their comment to be shouted down as discriminatory and narrow minded. It’s sad, but I find myself agreeing with @18 and @19 that maybe those of us who believed that funding charities that support primarily homosexual recipients, supporting business that profess their queer-friendliness and who have tried, against years of being raised in places where ‘Queer’ was a dirty word to view people as people and teach our children the same should amend that to say ‘Unless the homos just don’t want us around’
I was there. I was not in the conference room. Everything the plaintiffs report as having been said there, however, was said a million times in the stands, on the field and in the dugouts of certain teams. The hostility was palpable.
Legally? Private league, their rules. Personally? I gave up defending the existence of my own sexuality years ago – and the ones who always questioned me, got in my face and pretty much demanded genital monitor readouts? The Bona Fide Gays. Fuck ’em. I’m out, I’m happy, I’ll do my thing.
I have no issue with straight people coming into gay bars, with one caveat: Gay bars are not a tourist attraction; We are not here for your amusement. If you and your boyfriend/girlfriend are so afraid of being mistaken for gay that you have a death-grip on each other for the entire duration of your stay, then you need to get up out of here and head back to Belltown where you belong.
If, on the other hand, you can treat the gay patrons around you with the same respect and courtesy that you would like for yourself (even including any outlandishly dressed gays that comes standard in these parts) then you’re more than welcome to stay.
@24 Probably a simple typo, but I’d like to clarify that the Quake Rugby team plays in a predominantly STRAIGHT division (we are the only team that caters primarily to gay players, ever since the Portland Avalanche folded).
To say you are all “country backward-ass racists” would be an insult to racist! Not to long ago gays, lesbians, blacks, and who ever else, where sprinting to the courts to impose “non-discrimination” laws. Now that you have a “private league” using public property you have no problem discriminating against anyone not in your very shallow swimming pool! Congratulations….. It didn’t take long for you discriminating racists to bring the issue full circle. Where do I send my cash to support the lawyers shoving your ignorance up you ass?
Fascinating article on a very difficult subject. (And hey, @7, suck it.)
I work and volunteer in amateur sport at the community and national level, and have done so for over fifteen years. In that time, I could count the number of openly LGBTetc. players and coaches I have met on one hand. (I could count the number of openly gay male non-retired players and coaches on no hands.) There is still a huge problem with heterosexism and homophobia in sport.
In that context, it isn’t hard to see why organizations like the NAGAAA and the Gay World Series exist, and why they want to preserve their status as an island of tolerance in the sporting world. The difficulty comes when their efforts to preserve their status become discriminatory.
The big issue there is that, unlike a league restricted by age or gender, there is no documentary proof of an individual’s sexual orientation. In the end it has to come down to respecting how people self-identify.
As to limiting the numbers, while I’d love to live in a world where sexual orientation is as irrelevant as hair colour, we aren’t there yet – and sport is a lot farther than many other spheres of human activity. Until that day arrives, I would have to err on the side of respecting the wishes of members of the minority group to create and define their own safe spaces.
As someone who has played NAGAAA softball for over 15 years — here is my perspective.
In addition to participating in their local gay league, many of the gay teams play in straight men’s/women’s/co-ed leagues and compete very well. There are several levels of competition in the gay leagues. Some teams are comprised of people who never played softball/baseball or other sports previously and are learning the game. Other teams are comprised of players who are very skilled and have played ball since childhood. Many teams are a combination of all skill levels. The purpose of the gay leagues in the beginning was to have a place to play ball/meet others in a safe and nurturing environment.
As I recall, the two non-gay player rule was invoked for two main reasons: to permit supportive friends and families to participate and to prevent ringers. Many teams in the past at various tournaments would bring in non-gay players at the last minute simply to win a damn trophy. It was becoming quite an issue with several teams and tournaments. Many of the gay teams travel from city to city/tournament to tournament and are familiar with one another. Suddenly one would find a team suddenly loaded with a bunch of new teammates who would dominate a tournament. The more you win at a tournament, the longer you play. Lose and you’re out. Given the amount of money spent to travel, accommodations, food, car rental, time off work, etc., the ringer aspect took on new meaning. More often than not a team would bring in 5-6 big, fast, powerful guys just for a tournament and wipe out the competition. And while one can’t necessarily know another’s sexual identity, it was pretty clear that these ringers weren’t gay (bringing wives, children, girlfriend). These tournaments are a social event as well and a place to meet new friends and see other parts of the country. More often than not these “ringer” teams changed the atmosphere and the social spirit by either not participating in the social and other events or by downright surly and obnoxious behavior.
I have seen teams protested over the two-player rule and, in my experience, have seen the protest committees always handle these protests with great care and concern and with every attempt to make a fair decision. They know that teams have put a lot of time, effort and money to travel to and play in a tournament. The teams entering the tournaments know the rules and despite that, many still try to circumvent them.
Many, if not all, of the upper NAGAAA committee members have been involved for years and years and all are volunteers. NEVER have I seen any form of racial or any other type of discrimination. Go to a top-flight gay softball tournament. If you want to see true diversity that’s the ticket.
In years past I have played on many teams that had self-identified “bi” players. If someone says they are bi-sexual those players never counted against the two-player limit. The SF team knew the rules BEFORE entering the tournament and clearly broke them. Recall they had played in these tournaments for years and would certainly have been exposed to this rule in the past. Why would the players not simply say they were gay or bi-sexual? Again, the basis of the league is on sexual identity. If they had simply stated so, then there would have been no problem. The issue was that other teams at the Series knew the D2 team and realized they had these ringers playing and also knew they had not been playing with D2 in the local gay league.
That all being said, as a player I was always happy to have anyone comfortable being around my team be part of it. Many times my teams had many non-gay players who wanted to play but could not and I was very upset to not be able to play them. Sometimes I’d have to sit a player just because he wasn’t gay. On the other hand, there were also many times that we faced taunting and ridicule at straight tournaments or in city league play from those with narrow-minds. I agree that local leagues in most of the country still feel the need to ensure that their leagues are a safe haven and perhaps quotas or some similar type of other rule is necessary. One really must go watch a gay league on game day to understand. There is a wonderful free and happy spirit. There is laughter, some outrageousness, great competition and some very skilled athleticism too. There is truly a sense of community not easily found elsewhere.
On a national and tournament level however, I would like to see the rule changed. At some point along the road we have to make a change towards inclusion. Perhaps a requirement that for teams to play in sanctioned tournament that all players state that they have played in at least 50% of a a team’s games in the past 12 months. Or if teams are new or have new players then perhaps allow them to play as unsanctioned or make them ineligible for trophy play. There should be a way to move towards more participation, not less.
I played on the Gotham Knights, a NYC gay rugby team. We almost exclusively played straight teams, except during gay tournaments. We welcomed (read: recruited) straight players who actually had rugby experience. Most of us were playing this sport for the first time and didn’t know the difference between a hooker and a flanker. Restricting the straights would have been counterproductive to our chances of winning and also completely heterophobic.
But I’ve always been a fan of gay inclusion versus self-ghettoization, so I can acknowledge I may be in the minority on this.
@18: As a gay man who regularly brings straight friends to gay bars, the general feeling I’ve gotten is: While some gay guys are angry I’ve brought straight women with me, they’re far and away the minority. I think it proves that misogyny isn’t limited to the straight world.
As for straight men, I think most gay guys realize that they’re not available on some conscious or subconscious level. Problems result when someone on either side (straight, “joking” cockstease or gay “won’t take no for an answer” douchebag) goes a little too far… but I’ve only really seen that happen a few times ever.
Straight women who go to a gay bar for a bachelorette party though… they are reasonably and universally despised. As people said above, don’t gawk and be a tourist. It’s a bar, not a zoo.
Having played in the gay softball league for 20 years. I called this a long time ago. You can no discriminate and then bitch about being discrminated against. My teammates had a discussion over ten years ago, predicting the day that Nagaaa would get sued over this and the time has come.
Their protest committees have always been biased and unfair with vaguely written guidelines that could be interpreted anyway needed, much like the bible.
I love my gay softball league. But the Nagaaa board has no one to blame but themselves for this mess
@31 The problem of ringers is a fair one. Rather than focusing on sexuality as the way to prevent them, an alternative could be to require the later games in the tournament to be played by players who had appeared in two or three prior games (or whatever limit seems reasonable). That way new players can’t be introduced late in the tournament.
I seriously can’t believe the biphobia inherent in this story, and in some of the comments. If it’s a league for gay and bisexual men, as Melani is now claiming, how come people who say they’re bisexual are being kicked off?
I have absolutely no problem with GBT-only space. I have a problem with biphobia.
What I find interesting is that some gay people attempt to defy stereotypes about gay people, only to reinforce gender stereotypes.
For example, these “straight-acting” gay men will take up sport in order to appear “manlier” (whatever that’s supposed to be), and, in doing so, they are making an implicit statement on what men and women are supposed to be like. (Testosterone, aggression, fight-or-flight instinct, and all of that silly rubbish.)
This is all very funny and ironic to me–and not just a little bit misogynistic.
@37 or, maybe they like the competitive atmosphere and camaraderie/cooperation that comes with playing a team sport…?
What *I* find interesting is that in your comment you not only assumed that all gay men who play sports are “straight acting” (which they aren’t- some of the queeniest guys I know play on the rugby team) you have also completely glossed over the lesbian element to softball which just by their involvement smash gender stereotypes… so then the irony train comes full circle when it becomes readily apparent that your comment smacks of the very gender stereotypes and misogyny you claim to despise.
@31
There are straight leagues? Do they limit the number of gay players in those?
(Yes, I get it: openly gay players may face a lot of discrimination in non-gay leagues that drives them to not participate, but I doubt that the rules of the leagues themselves limit gay players. It’s a “de facto” versus “de jure” distinction. In a majority hetero league, you wouldn’t be able to disqualify ringers by convincing a board that that they’re gay, because there’s no rule against being gay.)
Seems like what they really need to put in the rules is something to avoid ringers, like a rule that mandates that players in the championships have to have participated in a certain number of local games.
Thoughtful, well-written, interesting. Thank you. — Alex Knisely, London
@Mister G (#13 &14) You make me want to cry, really, really hard. Seriously. Your words pierce me every time I read them. I can’t help but re-read them. They hurt and I guess that’s your purpose. You achieved it. So, good job. Your slings of arrows reached their mark well.
I am a straight female adult who was raised by my gay fathers. They have both passed now. I have a family of my own now. I guess you would talk about me behind my back, call me one of those useless breeders, with my SUV. I guess I’m one of those “cool straights” ruining your “vibe”. All those years they brought me with them everywhere, maybe they were ruining your “vibe” too.
I watched them get called all manner of foul names and stood with them at rallies and marched with them, and walked with them and still had to retain my ridiculous privileges because I was born this way: straight. I just was. I’m not even bisexual. And don’t think I didn’t try. I remember crying on our couch when I was 14 with them both holding me because I didn’t want to “fit in” if they were going to just get discriminated against.
I remember they were so much wiser than you. They were so much braver. You are such a coward. They were willing to fight and you’ve already decided you know every battle. I feel so sorry for you. One day we could pass in the street and you’ll judge me and think you know me because of what I look like with my kids in tow, or because I’m conservatively dressed and holding hands with my husband; but you’ll never know what allies we’ve been, picket lines we’ve stood on in the rain, the petitions both our names are on, the representatives that have letters from both of us, how hard we’ve fought together, maybe even the drinks we could have shared at a bar after a long day of fighting that good fight and if you would have given it the chance, what great friends we could have been.
It’s not even an issue of ringers, by these rules a team made up of PFLAG members can play regular season games – but should they make it to the series they are imedietly disqualified….that makes no sense.
Yes were strait, but were a pro-gay orinization that wants nothing more than to say I love & stand behind my gay family member(s) or friend(s) & so far were allowed to do so in any/every medium possible……….
Except this one. And that, just isn’t fair.
@13 & @14
I don’t know what strait friend/loved one hurt you they way they did, but I’m so sorry to see that it’s effected you in such a negative way. You really need to sit down and rethink the ignorant statement you typed out in two parts. And if you can’t see how hurtful that was than my friend I silently cry for the heart made of stone that you carry in your chest.
@AlethiaGrey, there are a whole lot of gay guys who really don’t appreciate straight people hanging out in our bars. This is especially true of the gay bars that are pickup joints. Which, I suspect your two gay dads never took you to.
Something else. Who the fuck are you to call me a coward? You have absolutely no idea of the prices I’ve paid for being gay. They go well beyond you crying some crocodile tears of sympathy, so dry your eyes.
@timtech, no one crushed my soul. But I’ve seen bars that were once gay bars convert to straight by the process I’ve described. Here’s something else: If, say, a quarter of the men in what was once my favorite “gay” bar are now straight, they can be (or think they are) as cool as they want to be, but they’ve just injected a big element of additional uncertainty.
In addition to the uncertainty that comes with trying to break the ice in general will now come the uncertainty of wondering whether that guy even plays for my team. Jesus Christ, straight people, don’t ya have enough meet markets of your own without screwing up the handful that we’ve got? Come on, is that really so much to ask?
@#25, how clueless could you be? In the real world, how many straight meet markets could a couple of openly and obviously gay guys survive in for very long without being made to feel very unwelcome, or worse? Please tell me that you were lying, because the alternative makes you look so much worse.
@scary tyler moore, because I wanna cruise with my own kind in, what, maybe 10 bars within a city with hundreds for opposite-sex couples to hunt in, you’re going to take your precious money and stay home. Gee, I sure lost quite an ally.
TO ALL:
The appeals to tolerance are fine and dandy, but I want you to think about the following. Why do you imagine that no gay players have come out in professional baseball, football, or basketball? Want to really know? See, I know a few of these people, and here’s the answer: They think they’ll be murdered.
I’m not kidding. They think they will be murdered if they come out while they are playing. Every single gay pro athlete I’ve ever talked to, and there have been a few whose names you’d immediately recognize, has told me that, aside from the insults and loss of income, they’d be afraid for their lives.
You really don’t think gay people need their own spaces, including athletic leagues? You’d better think again.
#33, how do you know how the majority feels? Trust me, every time you bring your girlfriends to the Cuff so they can help suck the life out of the place, there are a whole bunch of guys who are really pissed but who don’t say anything. Who are they going to complain to? You? Your girlfriends? The management? What good will it do?
By the way, it’s not about “misogyny.” I’m more than fine with dykes in the bars. I love seein’ ’em there. What I don’t appreciate is having straight people around. Take your girlfriends somewhere else, fer chrissakes.
@Canuck, I realize that it sounds like I hate women and/or straight people. But it’s not true. I just want a place or five that’s ours. That’s all.
you do have a place or five that’s yours: bathhouses, you ninny.
@scary, most of us really, really don’t want you in our bars, either.
It definitely sounds like there was some racism going on when they were deciding which players were gay or not, and I hate the idea that if someone identifies as some form of queer, a committee gets to nitpick if it’s queer “enough”.
But really, sometimes the best way for straight people to support gay people is to let the gay people have the spotlight sometimes. The league was created for gay people, not for “everyone who’s okay with gay people”. I’m glad straight allies exist, don’t get me wrong. I just think some things aren’t supposed to be about them.
Yeah, it would be nice if orientation didn’t matter, and gay, straight, bi, whatever athletes could play sports together and be open about who they are and it was all totally okay. But that’s not the reality in the “regular” leagues either, and opening up gay leagues to straights while “straight” leagues aren’t opening up to gays is just limiting the opportunities for gay athletes with nothing in return. There’s always a shortage of opportunities in athletics, because a lot more people want to get on a team than there are openings to do so, but straightness is not holding anybody back. There don’t need to be more athletic opportunities for straight people.
So… not really okay with what this league did, because of the racism and identity-policing. But definitely okay with gay sports leagues limiting straight participants or just not allowing them at all, even.
@ Mr. G. : “I realize that it sounds like I hate women and/or straight people. But it’s not true. I just want a place or five that’s ours. That’s all.”
I completely get it. Gay bars exist due to a desire to escape an environment (most bars – filled with horny hetero men) that is uninclusive and even dangerous.
What doesn’t occur to you is that many women (gay and straight) desire that too. We want to go out and dance somewhere that doesn’t involve the prospect of being harassed or roofied. But, for reasons that I’m sure you can imagine, women don’t have the luxury of having a space that is really “ours”.
And, as you’ve noticed from the (presumably) straight women in your favorite pick up joints, gay men don’t actually have that luxury either. So, you can complain to women about not getting to have your “own” gay male space as much as you want, but don’t expect too much sympathy ’cause we don’t have our “own” spaces either. Life ain’t fair.
First off, I’m one of those gay softball players with a straight son (and not biological btw) who plays on my team. Wow, who is this guy Melani and what paranoid planet did he land from? I have never experienced anti-gay slurs at our games. And if they occurred, the instigators would likely get their asses kicked out lickity split; with the lesbians leading the charge, followed by the gays, with the straights on our teams bringing up the rear (so to speak).
And WTF is it with the logic “we need these caps because of Oklahoma and Mississippi”? They don’t have straight guys on the gay teams there, my dear. Get over it gay-racists and misogynists. Your day was needed when I was a kid and I thank you for being there, but your discrimination is needed no more.
@Coco, why not go out dancing with your gay male buddy at a straight bar?
@jmnasoc, what, the gay teams are white-only? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Please provide some evidence, or retract your outrageous “racism” allegation. Same with the “misogynist” allegation. There’s no issue with having dykes on the gay team.