Anti-Gay Name-Calling is “Just A Good Laugh”?

Whenever I work with student-athletes on LGBT issues in sport, I do a short “stand up poll” at the beginning of the session where I ask several questions about their experiences with LGBT teammates, coaches and other LGBT-related topics. Typically, when I ask if anyone has heard anti-gay slurs or comments in the locker room, on the playing field or elsewhere in the athletic environment this school year, most of the room is standing. Next, I ask if anyone has heard coaches or teammates speak up to object to these anti-gay slurs. Typically, everyone sits down to indicate that they have not. Anti-gay slurs are an established, if not accepted, part of school athletic experience. Everyone hears them, but no one stops them.

That might change at Wartburg College in Waverly Iowa. Nicholas Yordi, the quarterback on the football team at Wartburg, was accused of shouting anti-gay slurs out the window of his residence hall room at a gay student passing by. The student contacted campus security and the Wartburg police were called in. Yordi was charged with disorderly conduct for shouting “abusive epithets likely to provoke a violent reaction from the victim.”

In court Yordi called himself “a dumb college kid” and testified that he yells at pedestrians for amusement, “Didn’t mean anything by it. Never have. Just getting a good laugh out of it.” Yordi’s attorney defended his client as “stupid,” “inappropriate” and “insensitive,” but not criminal. His motion to dismiss the charges was denied by the magistrate. The ruling will be made within 30 days and the penalty for a guilty verdict is up to 30 days in jail and a $625 fine.

We can argue about whether or not this case should be heard in a criminal court, but it seems clear that Yordi has not been served well by an athletic culture that accepts anti-gay slurs as just part of day to day interactions. When fans are allowed to target and taunt opposing players, like the University Of Oregon basketball fans taunted Kevin Love and when coaches and teammates use anti-gay slurs or are silent in response to them, young athletes like Nicholas Yordi learn that this is “just a good laugh.”

Whether defended as banter, teasing or taunting, the pervasiveness of anti-gay name-calling in athletics and the silence from school administrators and athletic leaders in response sends a powerful message of acceptance: It’s OK to call someone a “homo” or a “dyke.”

Many LGBT youth develop thick skin in response to the silence from coaches and teachers. I worry about the young people who cannot ignore these epithets so carelessly tossed about the locker room, screamed at opposing players in a game or shouted out dorm windows. Struggling in silence for their own sense of worth, these words don’t bounce off so easily. Do we care that they quit teams rather than endure the daily barrage of “anti-gay banter?” Do we care that they drop out of school or take their own lives? Equally important, do we take any responsibility for the festering homophobia among their straight teammates who think shouting “faggot” at passers-by is a good laugh?

Where did Nicholas Yordi get his “education” about the fun of anti-gay name-calling? If you are a coach, what are your athletes learning? If you are a parent, what are your children learning?