Keyboard Quarterbacks

By Karen Bailis

The same week that Penn State and women’s basketball coach Rene Portland settled an anti-gay discrimination suit brought by a former player, retired NBA player and Penn State alum John Amaechi came out as gay.

I can’t help wonder if Penn State, which has taken at least 20 years to see the anti-gay slurs written on Portland’s gym walls, will ask Amaechi for its 2006 Alumni Achievement Award back.

See, Happy Valley ain’t such a happy place if you’re gay, especially a lesbian playing for Portland. It’s not happy if Portland even thinks you’re a lesbian, as Jen Harris, the player who says she is not gay and brought the suit in 2005 after being dismissed from the team, contended. And while the settlement announced Monday admits no wrongdoing on the part of the school or the coach, Portland has been quoted in multiple publications since at least 1986 saying that she would not tolerate lesbians on her team. Even before the suit, former players and recruits had come forward to confirm that policy and to speak of their fear that their sexuality would be found out.

After a 1991 Philadelphia Inquirer article about Portland’s policy, an outcry prompted the university to add sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination clause and to offer some cursory diversity training that obviously didn’t take.

It took the lawsuit for Penn State to take any “real” disciplinary action, which included a slap on the wrist fine for Portland of $10,000 and the promise that any further discriminatory action would result in dismissal. That came after the university’s internal investigation found Portland fostered a “hostile, intimidating and offensive climate.” Great. At least 20 years of flat-out discrimination, and she gets a “just don’t do it again” finger wag.

In 1986, the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Portland saying about lesbians: “I will not have it in my program.”

Now, just imagine if she’d been referring to blacks or Jews or Asians instead of lesbians and see how long the coach who uttered that phrase keeps her job.

Portland’s had hers since Joe Paterno hired her in 1980 when he was athletic director. She’s had friends in high places ever since. She’d have to, to have endured this long.

Sure, she’s brought positive attention to the school. In addition to a Final Four appearance in 2000, Portland is a two-time WBCA National Coach of the Year, a four-time Big Ten Coach of the Year and the sixth winningest Division I coach of all-time.

But all those honors and accomplishments should mean nothing when a former star player who owes her stellar career as a point guard at the college, Olympic and professional levels to Portland confirms of her coach: “She does make it known when she’s recruiting that she doesn’t put up with homosexuality.” Suzy McConnell Serio said that in the Inquirer in 1991, and other former players joined her with similar assessments.

Other players in a 1992 LA Times story said that each year Portland would giver her “no drinking, no drugs, no lesbians” speech.

Yet Portland coaches on. Are the administrators at Penn State that clueless? Apparently, yes. Now, with more alleged evidence that Portland continued her no-lesbian policy, one wonders if Penn State is simply aggressively uninformed, just does not want to deal with the situation or supports blatant discrimination.

The sad part is, Portland is not alone in what’s called “negative recruiting.” Other coaches, many of them in top programs, are rumored to communicate during the recruiting process their intolerance of same-sex relationships, and they might point to competing programs as more tolerant and thus dens of iniquity.

Women’s sports programs have long battled against the so-called stigma of being a place where an inordinate number of lesbians gather.

That’s why so many had pinned a lot of hope to Harris’ lawsuit. They saw it as a way to address a longstanding, usually whispered problem in sports. Many hoped Portland – and Penn State -- would finally get a comeuppance.

Too bad the settlement of the lawsuit robs us of any real resolution, because the terms were not disclosed. Harris likely came away with a nice sum of money, but Portland keeps her job. And Penn State, though chastised and perhaps on a very slow road to “getting it,” goes seemingly unpunished.

The sports world – women’s and men’s -- is rife with homophobia. That’s why the only male professional team athletes to come out have done so, like Amaechi, after they’ve stopped playing. Perhaps Harris’ willingness to bravely take a stand and Amaechi’s glorious statement about who he really is have done a little more to break down the wall of homophobia that encloses the sports arena.

But until Penn State and Portland – and other programs and coaches like them – make some real changes, discrimination will continue to be a big gorilla in the locker room.