Something of a history: the LGBT movement in hockey
I know very few of you are into hockey, but I know I've got a flist made up of pretty much all the colors of the rainbow, so I thought you might be interested in something that's been going on in hockey fandom about the LGBT movement. I was actually going to copy&paste a post that someone had made on the latest development, but then I realized that maybe not everyone knows what most of the developments had been. I don't know how much of the stuff in hockey actually transcends national news/interest, so in case you aren't aware, I thought I'd put together a little bit of a primer on what's going on. (Granted, this is stuff as I remember it, so it's not meant to be all-encompassing or anything, but still.)
It started with Brendan Burke
If you were a hockey fan before November 2009, the first thing you'd ask about Brendan Burke is whether he's related to Brian Burke. He is; he's Brian's son. Brian is a well-known front-office figure in hockey--he was the General Manager of the Vancouver Canucks, the Anaheim Ducks (won a Stanley Cup with them), and is now managing the Toronto Maple Leafs, the NHL's most profitable team. He was also the General Manager of the 2010 USA Hockey team that won silver in the Olympics.
Brendan Burke, a senior at Miami University in Ohio, used to play the sport before he decided to quit his senior year in high school. At Miami University he got involved as a student manager, watching pre-scout videos, keeping goalie stats, and preparing the highlight reels for the team.
In November 2009, he decided to come out to the public as gay.
Brendan had quit hockey in high school not because of the reasons he'd told his parents then (that he was concerned he would not get enough ice time, that he disagreed with his coach), but because the homophobic slurs in the locker room had become too much for him to live with. Brendan came out fully intending to become an advocate for gay athletes.
The response was tremendously supportive. It felt like dialogue had opened up somewhat, and though it seemed almost certain that the road would be long and arduous, at least the journey had begun.
Two months later, on a treacherous part of the road on a snowy night, Brendan Burke's Jeep slid onto the path of a truck. He and his friend, Mark Reedy, both died.
"If it took one young man's courage to kick that door open, then let's make sure it stays open."
Following Brendan Burke's death, it fell upon his father (and, maybe to a lesser extent, his brother) to carry the torch.
Within weeks of Brendan's death, gay and lesbian advocates were reaching out directly for some of Brian Burke's candlepower. It felt impossible to say no, but inside Burke was floundering. "It's a comfort level," he says. "Before all of this, it was just a circle that I didn't move in. I didn't have any gay friends. I still don't, technically. It's not that I don't like it, but it's new territory, a learning process. I'm 55 years old. I've spent a lifetime acquiring habits. Before I went to the Pride Parade I was thinking, 'Good Lord, I'm a tough Irish Catholic hockey player with six kids. I drive a truck, chew tobacco. I hunt. I kill things.'"
Last May, just three months after Brendan's death, Burke got an e-mail from Jack Keilty, a senior at Royal St. George's College, a private boys' school in Toronto. Back in the fall, Jack had founded the gay-straight alliance at his school. There were only two members in the alliance (three if you count the earnest female guidance counselor): Jack, who is straight, and Andrew Mok, a junior at the time and the only openly gay student at RSGC. Despite its single-digit membership, Jack was determined to push the gay-straight alliance forward before he graduated. His first idea was to get Elton John to come to the school, but when that didn't pan out, his father suggested Brian Burke. In his e-mail, Jack told Burke that he'd followed his son's story and admired his bravery. He asked Burke if he'd come to the school and talk about Brendan. Burke fired back a one-line e-mail within minutes: "You name the time and the place and I'll be there."
Source
Growing acceptance
The examples are, to be honest, few and far in between, but so far NHL players are beginning to stand behind Brendan Burke.
Dissent
Sean Avery is really where this post comes in. While most of the coverage has so far been of the "yay" variety, one voice has expressed their personal opinion on the matter.
The following is a post that littl3ghost made on ontd_pucking, which you can find here (it's locked, but I'm reposting with permission--also, everything in italics is mine):
A Recap of the Uptown Sports Fiasco.
I was asked by adhesiveheart to post a comprehensive list of all the news stories that cropped up tonight about the Uptown Sports drama, which seems to have calmed down for now. While I was going to wait until tomorrow afternoon, some people have been asking for a recap, so I figure I can just edit this post tomorrow before the game if anything else has come up in the interim.
First off, the tweets... I've tried to put them in the most chronological order I can for ease of reading.
This is the one that started the whole mess:
Norton Sports was the first to comment on it, and since they said quite a lot on the matter over the course of the evening, the rather large screencap can be found here. For most of us, their tweets were brought to our attention by Paul Bissonnette (another hockey player, more an enforcer than a skill player, who has built something of a cult following on Twitter):
Following that we have commentary from New York Rangers reporter Jesse Spector, Keith Oldbermann and Down Goes Brown (a known blogger).
The first mainstream media reports of the conflict came from National Post, which included an interview from Don, the father Todd Reynolds who originally posted the tweets, supporting his son's stance. There was also, rather quickly, a report from PuckDaddy, which quoted both the National Post's interview with Don Reynolds and also a radio interview he did with TSN shortly after (a podcast of which can be found here) (The direct link, for non-members, is here).
Outsports followed by making two seperate posts about it, the first with a rather short summary of the events and the second that contained quotes from other sports agents speaking out against Uptown as well as a petition from change.org demanding an apology from Uptown for the comments.
Hockey Wilderness posted an article which addressed the ethics of a business using Twitter to promote personal opinions, while The Rangers Tribune issued a statement in full support of Avery and the HRC, becoming the first NHL franchise to officially support marraige quality, a fact which Blue Line Station picked up on, sharing the press release issued by the Rangers in full.
Following that, the New Civil Rights Movement (link is broken currently, but it worked about 30 minutes ago) and Oil on Whyte chimed in on the debate, in full support of Avery as well, after which the second of the two above OutSports article was posted.
Then, finally, we heard from TSN with a rather neutral take on the whole thing and a completely un-neutral take on the odeal from NBC Sports who, within their heavy criticism of Uptown, said:
We’re not here to silence someone that has an opinion. Free speech is a beautiful thing to have. That said, when it’s opinion that comes across as archaic, backwards, and founded in abject ignorance to the human condition we’re allowed to sound off on it as we choose to as well.
EDIT: Shortly after I made this post, Fox Sports chimed in as well. lost__emotions wrote an article for Aery's, which can be found here (Direct link here). The Star also wrote a really amazing article with a focus on Sean Avery's role in this, while ESPN stuck to a more "just the facts" write-up. It also includes a video of the original HRC promo that Avery did for anyone internationally who couldn't get the YouTube video to work.
And don't forget to check the comments for more links!
And this is where we sit right now. Still no word from NHL.com, but we might be holding our breath for a while on that one. Still, with everyone else talking about this, Avery to stir up a bit of controversy yet again and get people talking - but this time, it's about something good. One has to wonder whether he knew this was going to happen and if he's sitting back feeling smug right now or not.
/end post
Thoughts
Maybe I'm too used to seeing intolerance, but I think my biggest problem with the Uptown tweets was that they were personal opinions expressed using an official account. That's just bad business practice in general.
Unfortunately the "sanctity of marriage" argument is alive and well with some people, and if you grew up a certain way, you would just be predisposed to thinking that marriage, as a celebration of life, gets devalued when you allow two men who can't have children to marry (because straight but infertile couples can't marry either?), and what's stopping men from marrying goats next, right? (Which is just such a backwards argument, but urgh. Whatever.)
But views like that will continue to exist. As some of the articles on Brendan Burke have pointed out, we can't really wait until everyone's ready before we can say "Okay, now we can have an openly gay professional athlete play his sport." Just won't happen.
I think I'd just like to dwell more on the fact that the response to Uptown has been overwhelmingly in support of gay marriage. That's what I'd like to focus on, that however small, the hockey community is gradually taking steps towards achieving a more open, more tolerant working environment for gay hockey players.
And that's all I really want to say. Sorry it's so long. :\
It started with Brendan Burke
If you were a hockey fan before November 2009, the first thing you'd ask about Brendan Burke is whether he's related to Brian Burke. He is; he's Brian's son. Brian is a well-known front-office figure in hockey--he was the General Manager of the Vancouver Canucks, the Anaheim Ducks (won a Stanley Cup with them), and is now managing the Toronto Maple Leafs, the NHL's most profitable team. He was also the General Manager of the 2010 USA Hockey team that won silver in the Olympics.
Brendan Burke, a senior at Miami University in Ohio, used to play the sport before he decided to quit his senior year in high school. At Miami University he got involved as a student manager, watching pre-scout videos, keeping goalie stats, and preparing the highlight reels for the team.
In November 2009, he decided to come out to the public as gay.
Brendan had quit hockey in high school not because of the reasons he'd told his parents then (that he was concerned he would not get enough ice time, that he disagreed with his coach), but because the homophobic slurs in the locker room had become too much for him to live with. Brendan came out fully intending to become an advocate for gay athletes.
The response was tremendously supportive. It felt like dialogue had opened up somewhat, and though it seemed almost certain that the road would be long and arduous, at least the journey had begun.
Two months later, on a treacherous part of the road on a snowy night, Brendan Burke's Jeep slid onto the path of a truck. He and his friend, Mark Reedy, both died.
"If it took one young man's courage to kick that door open, then let's make sure it stays open."
Following Brendan Burke's death, it fell upon his father (and, maybe to a lesser extent, his brother) to carry the torch.
Within weeks of Brendan's death, gay and lesbian advocates were reaching out directly for some of Brian Burke's candlepower. It felt impossible to say no, but inside Burke was floundering. "It's a comfort level," he says. "Before all of this, it was just a circle that I didn't move in. I didn't have any gay friends. I still don't, technically. It's not that I don't like it, but it's new territory, a learning process. I'm 55 years old. I've spent a lifetime acquiring habits. Before I went to the Pride Parade I was thinking, 'Good Lord, I'm a tough Irish Catholic hockey player with six kids. I drive a truck, chew tobacco. I hunt. I kill things.'"
Last May, just three months after Brendan's death, Burke got an e-mail from Jack Keilty, a senior at Royal St. George's College, a private boys' school in Toronto. Back in the fall, Jack had founded the gay-straight alliance at his school. There were only two members in the alliance (three if you count the earnest female guidance counselor): Jack, who is straight, and Andrew Mok, a junior at the time and the only openly gay student at RSGC. Despite its single-digit membership, Jack was determined to push the gay-straight alliance forward before he graduated. His first idea was to get Elton John to come to the school, but when that didn't pan out, his father suggested Brian Burke. In his e-mail, Jack told Burke that he'd followed his son's story and admired his bravery. He asked Burke if he'd come to the school and talk about Brendan. Burke fired back a one-line e-mail within minutes: "You name the time and the place and I'll be there."
Source
Growing acceptance
The examples are, to be honest, few and far in between, but so far NHL players are beginning to stand behind Brendan Burke.
- Last June, weeks after the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, members of the Chicago Gay Hockey Association approached the team about having the Stanley Cup at the Chicago Pride Parade. The team said yes, and even more importantly, one of the players offered to be on the float with the Cup. Brent Sopel used to play for a team that Brian Burke had managed, and so he wanted his family to honor Brendan that way.
- A year after Brendan's death, a few more players went on the record to say they would support a teammate if they decided to come out. (Actually, according to a possibly unscientific poll, many players seem to think they have a gay teammate already. Whether many would support them or not remains to be seen.)
- More recently, Sean Avery (of the New York Rangers) said he would support a player at any level who might want to come out to his teammates. He even went as far as recording a PSA supporting gay marriage:
Never mind that he says "I treat everyone the way I expect to be treated" and he's probably most known outside hockey for calling Elisha Cuthbert his "sloppy seconds" after she started dating another NHL player. But still. :|
Click to viewDissent
Sean Avery is really where this post comes in. While most of the coverage has so far been of the "yay" variety, one voice has expressed their personal opinion on the matter.
The following is a post that littl3ghost made on ontd_pucking, which you can find here (it's locked, but I'm reposting with permission--also, everything in italics is mine):
A Recap of the Uptown Sports Fiasco.
I was asked by adhesiveheart to post a comprehensive list of all the news stories that cropped up tonight about the Uptown Sports drama, which seems to have calmed down for now. While I was going to wait until tomorrow afternoon, some people have been asking for a recap, so I figure I can just edit this post tomorrow before the game if anything else has come up in the interim.
First off, the tweets... I've tried to put them in the most chronological order I can for ease of reading.
This is the one that started the whole mess:
Norton Sports was the first to comment on it, and since they said quite a lot on the matter over the course of the evening, the rather large screencap can be found here. For most of us, their tweets were brought to our attention by Paul Bissonnette (another hockey player, more an enforcer than a skill player, who has built something of a cult following on Twitter):
Following that we have commentary from New York Rangers reporter Jesse Spector, Keith Oldbermann and Down Goes Brown (a known blogger).
The first mainstream media reports of the conflict came from National Post, which included an interview from Don, the father Todd Reynolds who originally posted the tweets, supporting his son's stance. There was also, rather quickly, a report from PuckDaddy, which quoted both the National Post's interview with Don Reynolds and also a radio interview he did with TSN shortly after (a podcast of which can be found here) (The direct link, for non-members, is here).
Outsports followed by making two seperate posts about it, the first with a rather short summary of the events and the second that contained quotes from other sports agents speaking out against Uptown as well as a petition from change.org demanding an apology from Uptown for the comments.
Hockey Wilderness posted an article which addressed the ethics of a business using Twitter to promote personal opinions, while The Rangers Tribune issued a statement in full support of Avery and the HRC, becoming the first NHL franchise to officially support marraige quality, a fact which Blue Line Station picked up on, sharing the press release issued by the Rangers in full.
Following that, the New Civil Rights Movement (link is broken currently, but it worked about 30 minutes ago) and Oil on Whyte chimed in on the debate, in full support of Avery as well, after which the second of the two above OutSports article was posted.
Then, finally, we heard from TSN with a rather neutral take on the whole thing and a completely un-neutral take on the odeal from NBC Sports who, within their heavy criticism of Uptown, said:
We’re not here to silence someone that has an opinion. Free speech is a beautiful thing to have. That said, when it’s opinion that comes across as archaic, backwards, and founded in abject ignorance to the human condition we’re allowed to sound off on it as we choose to as well.
EDIT: Shortly after I made this post, Fox Sports chimed in as well. lost__emotions wrote an article for Aery's, which can be found here (Direct link here). The Star also wrote a really amazing article with a focus on Sean Avery's role in this, while ESPN stuck to a more "just the facts" write-up. It also includes a video of the original HRC promo that Avery did for anyone internationally who couldn't get the YouTube video to work.
And don't forget to check the comments for more links!
And this is where we sit right now. Still no word from NHL.com, but we might be holding our breath for a while on that one. Still, with everyone else talking about this, Avery to stir up a bit of controversy yet again and get people talking - but this time, it's about something good. One has to wonder whether he knew this was going to happen and if he's sitting back feeling smug right now or not.
/end post
Thoughts
Maybe I'm too used to seeing intolerance, but I think my biggest problem with the Uptown tweets was that they were personal opinions expressed using an official account. That's just bad business practice in general.
Unfortunately the "sanctity of marriage" argument is alive and well with some people, and if you grew up a certain way, you would just be predisposed to thinking that marriage, as a celebration of life, gets devalued when you allow two men who can't have children to marry (because straight but infertile couples can't marry either?), and what's stopping men from marrying goats next, right? (Which is just such a backwards argument, but urgh. Whatever.)
But views like that will continue to exist. As some of the articles on Brendan Burke have pointed out, we can't really wait until everyone's ready before we can say "Okay, now we can have an openly gay professional athlete play his sport." Just won't happen.
I think I'd just like to dwell more on the fact that the response to Uptown has been overwhelmingly in support of gay marriage. That's what I'd like to focus on, that however small, the hockey community is gradually taking steps towards achieving a more open, more tolerant working environment for gay hockey players.
And that's all I really want to say. Sorry it's so long. :\