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'It's fun to stay at the YMCA'
Long centuries of persecution have turned us LGBT people into the ultimate survivors. Early in the Western culture game, we developed an uncanny ability to mole our way into an unfriendly institution and use it for our own purposes. This way, we could have a life where we could be safe and socially accepted, yet pursue our secret relationships. In the past we infiltrated the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, the Holy Roman Empire, and governments too numerous to mention. Infiltrating the YMCA would be a slam dunk.
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| Action from the 2006 Gay Games |
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So the YMCA had become a cruisy nexus for gay male life. Says GLBTQ: “Men who did not realize that a gay subculture existed discovered one at the YMCA when they stopped to take rooms upon their arrival in the city. Other men discovered the YMCA through friends or through scandals that received heavy newspaper coverage.” Gay historian John Donald Gustav-Wrathall did some groundbreaking research that reveals the intense atmosphere of a turn-of-the-century Y – the proselytizing, the over-the-top religious emotion, the tears and prayers. Leaders urged young men to pair up for friendship and male bonding, with the stronger Christian of the two hopefully getting his bud saved. From bonding to booty was only a short step.
Gay men set up housekeeping in YMCA bachelor apartments, used them for tricking, even for maintaining long-time closet love relationships with other residents. YMCA desk clerks and secretaries were often gay men who sought those positions deliberately so they could help facilitate other men’s arrangements. Gustav-Wrathall even suggests that some YMCA top figures – notably prominent secretary Robert R. McBurney – were closet cases themselves. He estimated that between 20 and 30 percent of old-time YMCA leaders were lifelong bachelors.
Around 1900, some YMCA leaders realized that things were getting out of hand, and began cautioning their members about “excessive friendship.” Since every state had strict sodomy laws, the police sometimes came knocking. One of the biggest scandals, breaking in Newport, Rhode Island in 1919, involved U.S. Navy personnel and two YMCA ministers. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s chief of staff was busted for gay sex in a Y restroom. Amazingly, the organization managed to weather these storms.
By the 1970s, that Village People hit tune “Y.M.C.A.” was celebrating a gay scene that had been operating merrily for almost a century. When basketball had came along, there were surely males of ours among those early players -- bumping each other on purpose on the court, trading some veiled but smouldering looks in the locker room later. There must have hundreds of them – nameless pioneers who built the tradition of homos loving hoops that comes down to us today.
Lesbians of the day had their own fun staying at the Y. The Young Women’s Christian Association had managed to avoid being under the heel of evangelical patriarchy, and it went activist on women’s issues – health, job safety, education, voting, segregation. Here the intimate relationships between women could find shelter in YWCA boarding houses for unmarried females. In her Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, historian Lillian Faderman credits the YWCA with a role in the emerging lesbian and feminist movements.
Today those decades of basketball in the YWCA’s progressive and protected gyms, those nameless female pioneers in their bloomers or early-model shorts, surely have contributed to basketball’s passionate popularity with lesbian and bi women. It’s not surprising that the post-Didrikson list of out female names is so long and dates back to the ‘70s. As I write this, it starts with Carol Blazejowski, manager of New York Liberty, and includes Mariah Burton-Nelson, Helen Carroll, Dora Dome, Pat Griffin, LisaAnn Pleban, Lauren Ruffin, Sheryl Swoopes, Michele Van Gorp and Sue Wicks. Some have played many roles: player, coach, sports director, author, activist.
Today the muscular-Christian front still takes whacks at women’s basketball. Former coach Pat Griffin, in her landmark book Strong Women, Deep Closets, describes the frequency with which women coaches are accused (whether rightly or wrongly) of seeking sexual relationships with their team members. With it comes “negative recruiting” – rumors that are circulated in order to frighten a talented student athlete away from a school where the coach or teammates might be lesbian. It happens often in women’s basketball, and the impulse behind this ugly strategy comes from past history – the fact that basketball was brewed in a bubbling cauldron of muscular Christianity.
As a lighter footnote to all this, the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” is now such a golden oldie that many right-wing Christians don’t have a clue about the real meaning of its sly lyrics. I found some Christian blogs where righters expressed their shock when they first learned the homo history behind this song.
Today’s YMCA has lightened up. With a wisdom and sense of humor not often seen in the churchy ranks, the organization has decided to grin and bear it where the song is concerned. A recent issue of Y.M.C.A. News discussed what fun it is to stay at YMCA resorts, and the editors actually said, “Maybe the Village People were right.”
TV actor Randy Jones, who played the cowboy in Village People, said in an interview that the band wanted to be positive about the YMCA. “They have provided food, shelter and spiritual encouragement for a lot of people for more than a century. They provide excellent physical programs for young and old, and it’s a very positive institution. That’s why we wanted to sing about them.” When the song came out, Jones says, there was the possible legal ticklishness, since the acronym YMCA is a registered trademark and the organization could have sued.
But, Jones added, “When ‘YMCA’ became a hit, the Y was thinking of our song as a free commercial, so everything was cool.”
Today's scene
Today the spirit of James Naismith still hovers over his sport. In 2006 a biopic about his life was released in DVD. Recently the yellowing typed document with his original 13 rules was purchased from his heirs by the Smithsonian Institute for $5 million.
Meanwhile, America’s religious right is doing a fast break with their new, improved version of muscular Christianity, which now includes the ex-gay ministries. Like Coach Naismith, muscular Christianity has logged a long record of losses. But the fundies are still trying to impose that social equation – namely, men + sports = Christian manliness. But it’s based on wishful thinking and faulty math. The gay community has shown the world that “traditional Christian manliness” doesn’t automatically equal heterosexual men. In fact, some of the gnarliest, manliest men around are gay and bi males. Nor does “traditional femininity” automatically add up to heterosexual women. Yet the religious right still believe they have a live ball in their hands.
Organizations like Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action give special attention to the NBA. They would like to see March Madness be “muscular madness.” If college star Roger Powell Jr. makes it through the NBA draft, he says he plans to use the NBA as a witnessing platform. In books and lectures, basketball is a handy symbol for the Christian spiritual life. Christian colleges make their presence more and more felt in intercollegiate hoops. Christianity Today covers basketball news and calls it “the sport of saints.” Commentator Debbie Schussel loves to rip the WNBA, and barks that “women who act like men are a bad role model for girls.” Despite the sermonizing, scandals do happen in the Christian basketball world, as in 2003 when Baylor University got outed for serious violations of NCAA regulations, including drug use.
Since the religious right haven’t been very nice to people with HIV/AIDS, it’s not surprising that the NBA is the only league with a homophobic “Magic Johnson infection-control rule.” It requires the immediate removal from the game of any player who is bleeding. Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban, who is sympathetic to the idea of openly gay players, points out how ridiculous the rule is. He says: “Can you imagine if they had infection control in the NFL? They're bleeding all over each other like stuffed pigs.”
Despite the anti-gay frenzy, 2007 did see the first two formal coming-outs in men’s basketball.
First John Amaechi did a high-profile announcement. His story reflects the fact that he was born and raised in England, where society has made greater strides than the U.S. in loosening the stranglehold of puritan churchism on sport. Amaechi played on teams all over Europe before his dream came true at age 23 -- being the first British player to make the American NBA. In our interview, John’s comments revealed his personal take on the religious issues still jarring U.S. basketball.
PNW: As a Brit, how do you see the homophobia scene in the U.S.? Do you feel less safe here?
JA: Homophobia is not government-sanctioned in Britain. You can get away with less there than you can in America. Here, in most of the states, a gay person has no value.
PNW: How do you view the constant uproars about religion in the United States?
JA: I think it’s ironic that many Americans condemn religious fundamentalism when it wears a brown face, but they won’t condemn it when it wears a white face.
In another interview, when asked how the NBA would react if an active player came out, Amaechi said, “It would be like an alien dropping down from space. There'd be fear, then panic. [The NBA] just wouldn't know how to handle it."
Meanwhile, Zach Puchtel, former Big Ten player for the University of Minnesota, did a low-profile coming-out at a local fashion show -- he simply walked to the front of the stage and told everybody he was gay. Mainstream media missed this breaking news completely, but it didn’t escape the sharp eyes of Outsports.com and other gay sports media.
Though our athletes, coaches and fans still face an uphill game in pro basketball, they’ve discovered their own muscular fiber on their own turf, and are defining “manhood” and “womanhood” their own way. Basketball is now possibly the most popular LGBT sport in our community, with men’s and women’s amateur teams all over the country and a National Gay Basketball Association championship. Internationally, muscular LGBT basketball is spreading almost as fast as muscular Christian variety did during the missionary era. Under the rainbow umbrella of the International GLBT and Friends Association, which aims to unite athletes and cultures through basketball, there are thriving teams and leagues in Canada and Australia, as well as most of the EU countries.
In short, the attempt to use hoops as a weapon for making homos go straight has backfired magnificently. Surely our bid to own basketball has finally made it a true people’s game – “the most democratic sport” on the planet. is t
Further reading:
Books:
“Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld,” by Theo Aronson (Barnes & Noble Books, 1994).
“Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920,” by Clifford Putney (Harvard University Press, 2001).
“Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American Sport,” by Tony Ladd & James A. Mathisen (Baker Books, 1999).
“Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age,” edited by Donald E. Hall (Cambridge University Press, 1994).
“From Muscular Christianity to the Market Place: The History of Men’s and Boy’s Basketball in the United States, 1891-1957,” by Albert Gammon Applin II, Ph.D. (University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1982).
“Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same Sex Relations and the YMCA,” by John Donald Gustav-Wrathall (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
“Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport,” by Pat Griffin (Human Kinetics, 1998)
“Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America,” by Lillian Faderman (Penguin)
“Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940,” by George Chauncey
(Basic Books, 1995).
Online:
Pat Griffin’s “It Takes a Team” website
History of the YMCA
Personal documents of James Naismith relating basketball
Copyright (c) 2007 by Patricia Nell Warren, all rights reserved
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