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No Longer Hiding
A Gay Ex-Collegiate Runner Gets
Empowered by Sports Group
By Paul Farber
For Outsports.com
(Paul Farber is Co-Chair of PATH (Penn’s Athletes and Allies Tackling
Homophobia and Heterosexism) at
the University of Pennsylvania.
 I lost it
Tuesday night. It wasn’t until an hour after the event I had been
planning for the past several months, “Coming Out to Play: The
Experience of the LGBT Athlete” for my school’s Pride week that it
happened. As soon as a friend who had attended the panel called to
congratulate me, I finally realized the magnitude of the event in
terms of my own development and I started to shed tears. During the
many months of researching and contacting speakers, scheduling and
booking a facility, writing press releases, and even finding
last-minute replacements for two panelists who unfortunately had to
cancel, I never fully saw to what extent this event would mean to me.
I cried on the phone with this friend for almost 30 minutes, but I
lost it with her because of the other things I “lost” by planning and
putting on this event.
“Coming Out to
Play” was held in the very building, the Dunning Coaches Center, where
only 14 months before I had come to quit the track team at Penn. It
was then and there I divulged to my sprinting coach that I was gay,
how being closeted on team had driven me into deep depression and
solitude, and that I saw no choice but to leave. He, contradicting my
assumptions of how he’d take it, was completely understanding and
conscious of the strain I must have felt. Knowing that my team, while
on many levels was very caring and cohesive, also suffered from
rampant feelings of homophobia and an outward hatred of gays. So, 14
months after I walked away from the track, and specifically the
Dunning Coaches Center, when I came back Tuesday night, I “lost” my
fear. I was walking into the building with ownership of my identity,
proprietor of my gayness and my love of athletics, and free of the
shackles of being closeted. I was in control here and loving every
minute of it.
When I left
the team last winter, it took me some time to examine my feelings of
isolation. While running, I had felt quite alone, as among the many
programs and incentives offered to athletes at this Division I school
of mine, there was never a mention of resources for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, or questioning athletes. If I needed to borrow
a laptop or get a summer job, no sweat, but if I was gay? Too bad. It
seemed the world was at my disposal, but the exclusion of LGBT
resources was a huge void that I felt on an everyday basis as an
athlete. Eventually seeing this experience from an outside
perspective, it was clear that if a dialogue was started amongst the
LGBT and athletic communities, maybe athletes would feel comfortable
getting help and finding people to reach out to.
So this spring
I helped form a new task force, through the LGBT Center at the
University of Pennsylvania called PATH — Penn’s Athletes and Allies
Tackling Homophobia and Heterosexism. As our mission statement reads:
PATH is
a new task force forming to address the mutual concerns of Penn’s LGBT
and Athletic communities. By starting a dialogue between the groups,
we hope to create a safe environment for athletes, coaches,
administrators, and fans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or
questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity. We also want
to establish resources for those in the athletic community who wish to
come out, and for heterosexual athletes to receive accurate
information about LGBT issues. By bridging the gap between the
communities, our goal is to foster positive communications and ensure
Penn's Athletics program is welcoming of people of all sexual and
gender identities and that the LGBT community is welcoming of
athletes.
Through PATH,
we hope to ensure that athletes never have to feel isolation, and
teams won’t have to have any athlete or coach not be able to live up
to their fullest potential because they have the weight of sexuality
on their shoulders. Referencing a comment from one of our panelists,
Elise Betz, former collegiate athlete and quarterback for the
Philadelphia Liberty Belles champion football team: When a
team’s season may come down to one player or one moment, shouldn’t you
want to make sure that the athlete isn’t dealing with anything that
would hinder the team’s chances at glory? I know I can speak from
experience that holding back and living in fear because of being a
closeted athlete kept me from being the best runner I could be. How
many teams have collectively been prevented from achieving success due
to the fact they neglected the needs of their LGBT athletes?
Tuesday’s
discussion not only helped validate a lot of my own personal feelings
and the agenda of PATH, but also struck a chord because of the
resolutions the panelists came up with to combat homophobia are
measures I can remember as an athlete would have made the world of
difference. When panelist Allied-Athlete Erin Rhoades mentioned the
importance of having LGBTQ resources announced to all athletes and
coaches before the season, I couldn’t help but remember my own first
day of practice, where I quickly became aware of the difficulties I
would face as a gay athlete.
The matter at
hand for me here is about reaching out to the athletics community, in
a way of both affirming the LGBT athletes’ and coaches’ existence, and
to demand action be taken place to combat discrimination and silence.
So when I lost
it after the event, it was for the runner in me, or any other athlete,
who showed up at his or her first day of practice scared of being
labeled gay; it was for how far I’ve come as a gay man who can be
proud and outspoken; and both pleased and fired up that the dialogue
has started and the ball seems to be finally rolling. My only question
is, who is going to pick it up next?
March 28, 2003 |
