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The Games

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Gay men and sports-it's a proposition loaded with boyhood traumas, stereotypes, and a whole new jock reality. DEGEN PENER reports.

VERY SPRING for the past four years I have stayed inside on the weekends as much as possible and watched college basketball. The fact that I do this continues to amaze me.

I'll admit it all started because I developed a severe infatuation with a player, former Duke center Christian Laettner, a 6-foot-II, devilish, blue-eyed angel who now plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves. During the 1990 NCAA tournament I religiously watched Duke go all the way to win the championship, patiently waiting for those all-too-few close-ups of Laettner's pretty-boy face and his lanky frame, which was far too covered up by his baggy uniform.

But then something unexpected happened. I found myself watching games in which Duke wasn't playing. I was on the phone with my straight brothers discussing miracle three-pointers, having personal fouls explained to me, and arguing about the relative merits of teams from states like Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, states I have never even imagined visiting. I became obsessed with a sport I thought I had mercifully left behind when I said goodbye to high school gym class. I have since watched pro football games and enjoyed them too.

Why has this surprised me so much? Because growing up in the Midwest, the land of fairy-tale romances between quarterbacks and cheerleaders, I'd always thought that being gay and enjoying sports were mutually incompatible activities. There are plenty of good reasons why I and many gay men believe that. Here are a few:

1. Not a single player, past or present, has ever competed in baseball's major leagues as an openly gay man. The same goes for the National Football League. And the National Basketball Association. And even, can you believe, the National Hockey League.

2. No American athlete has competed at any Olympics as an openly gay man. As far as I can find out, no athlete from anywhere in the entire world has done this. Perhaps this has something to do with why I found the countless shots of Dan Jansen's wife, Robin, crying with joy in Lillehammer so annoying. I'm sure she's a very nice woman, but please, we're long overdue for some balanced coverage.

3. Most athletes, like most members of the armed forces, are not yet secure enough to shower anywhere near a known homo.

Degen Pener is writer-at-large for Elle magazine and a former New York Times columnist.

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4. The Gay Games are called the Gay Games because the United States Olympic Committee was willing to fight a long and costly legal battle to keep them from being called the Gay Olympics. The USOC has not taken similar action against the Rat Olympics.

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VO SAY THAT GAY MEN simply aren't welcome in the world of big league sports is an enormous understatement. Ed Gallagher, an offensive lineman at the University of Pittsburgh in the late '70s, knows that all too well.

"I used to have a total fear of somebody suggesting I was gay back then," he says. "The word faggot blasted in my head all the time. I didn't know how anything gay could mesh with my concept of what a jock was. If you were sensitive to helping little old ladies, you might get razzed about it. It was like sensitivity at all was anathema to being an athlete. It didn't mesh with the killer instinct you were supposed to have. And I certainly equated gay infatuations with sensitive nellie stuff."

After he left college, Gallagher, a six-foot-six, 275pound man, continued to live in fear of his homosexuality, with devastating results. In 1985, at the age of 27, he had his first sexual experience with another man. Twelve days later he tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Kensico Dam in Valhalla, New York.

It took becoming a quadriplegic as a result of his suicide attempt to lead him out of the closet. Today he speaks to New York area students about his experience. "I direct an organization I began in 1991, called Alive to Thrive, along with two other people who are spinal-cord injured," he says. "We speak on substance-abuse prevention, suicide prevention, disability awareness, self-esteem enhancement. I talk about being gay. I always bring it up."

Even so, Gallagher can't imagine playing football in 1994 and being out. "I don't think I could," he says. "It would have to be very clandestine."

Despite all this depressing news, gay men and organized sports are becoming more compatible. The world of sports is changing, albeit not drastically. Because of people like Gallagher, it is no longer quite the impenetrable fortress of heterosexuality it used to be. More and more big-name athletes are coming out, challenging the notion that all jocks are straight.

The myth began to be chipped away at in 1975, when former NFL running

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

AT HIS BEST: Greg Louganis (left) and Ablin Killiat at the 1988 Olympics.

GAY GAMES IV