Homosexuality in modern sports

Introduction

Now more than ever open homosexuality is becoming more common and more accepted in the sporting world. With outspoken homosexual athletes, including Sheryl Swoopes, Billy Jean King, Dennis Rodman and Billy Bean, in the limelight, the stigma has begun to slowly fade away. In the 1980’s Tom Waddell, an Olympic decathlete hosted the first Gay Games in San Francisco . Since then many homosexual sporting organizations have been founded along with sporting events that feature homosexual athletes . While progress has been made, homosexual athletes still face many challenges. Most locker rooms have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and there are few openly gay male athletes in hyper masculine sports like football. On the other hand, female athletes in sports seen as masculine are often assumed to be gay. As the gay community continues to become more widely accepted in the U.S. we can expect that more homosexual athletes will openly speak out and demand fair treatment in the sporting world.

The History of Homosexuality in Sports

It can be assumed that for however long sports have been played, there have been individuals who were homosexual participating in them. However, in ancient times homosexuality was not the taboo that it is in contemporary America and sexual orientation was not an issue. In the last century, athletes began to identify themselves as homosexual. Still, we must wonder how many athletes of the 20th century kept their sexuality a secret in fear of the negative reaction they might have received. With this in mind, here is a time-line of the key homosexual athletes and events.

Bill Tilden: An openly gay American tennis player. Tilden won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon. He went on to win two more Wimbledon titles, seven U.S. championships, and seven Davis Cups. In 1950 he was named the greatest tennis player of the first half of the 20th century.