Homosexuality, baseball's biggest taboo

[Number_Fourteen]

Funny you should mention Glenn Burke.

Originally posted by westofyou
Not really, I lived in the Bay Area for 20 years, I remember Billy Ball and Mike Norris very well. I've heard the same about Burke.

Well, not meant as "odd that you, in particular, should mention him" or "ha ha" funny... more along the lines of "what a coincidence" funny... but, I would not want to split hairs here.

[Tony Cloninger]

Dave Kopay....in football.....an even more "manly" sport.......wrote in his book that there was at least 1 or 2 gay men on every team. And he played for several of them.

In Washington he said he had an affair with an All-Pro receiver. Now about 10 years ago or so.......a TE for that team named Jerry Smith dies of AIDS. It was reported quickly and quitely on NBC during the pregame show. You can pretty much assume, just like i did that he was talking about this person.

But the main thing is that in the sport of football you have to be even more macho then baseball. It is the only way to survive.

He wrote that Vince Lombardi tolerated homosexuals on the team beacuse one of his own brothers or cousins was one. It was a family member for sure of his (I read this book by Kopay about 5-6 years ago) but i do remember alot of this.

I also remember reading LB Dave Megesseys (wrong speeling probably) book about this same subject. He was not gay. He was a counter culture football player type but he exposed football for it's drugs....and for a couple of pages...some of the gay men who played it.

In going back to Burke. There was an article in SPORT magazine several years back (It has to be beacuse that magazine is old) but Lopes and some Dodger players knew he was gay but it was no big deal to them. I think ALOT more players know when someone is gay and some are more tolerant than we think but they are not going to openly say this for fear of looking bad by other players.

[Falls City Beer]

"I think ALOT more players know when someone is gay and some are more tolerant than we think but they are not going to openly say this for fear of looking bad by other players."

I think you're absolutely right, and I think that's a great observation.

[WVRed]

I dont mind players coming out and saying that they are gay, its just when they come out and constantly throw it in your face. Its like, "Im gay, treat me special".

Compare Ellen Degeneres with Rosie O'Donnell, both are lesbians, but one doesnt flaunt it with the media every chance they get. Can you guess which one?

I think that Ellen is far more dignified in the way she goes about representing herself than is Rosie. The other day when Rosie was doing that "lesbian marriage" thingy, you could just see her grasping for straws with the media, trying to get all the attention. Her career is going down the tubes, and this is her way of trying to resurrect it. Didn't Ellen's past wife do the same thing?

[Hubba]

Does anyone think that there will be a Redszone wedding anytime
soon now that the closet doors have been opened.

[Far East]

Jackie was not doing behavior that is unnatural and wrong... It is no different than a drug addict or in my opinion a steriod user. All of these are behaviors that should not be tolerated.

I've been out of town all weekend, I see that this thread is quite long, but feel that I can not let this opportunity slide.

First off, as you can tell from the foregoing diverse posts the "unnatural and wrong" concept is debatable.

Secondly, the drug addict and steroid user virtually have acted voluntarily (at least in the beginning) and have made a conscious decision having led them to their plight.

Conversely, there is strong evidence -- although not conclusive -- that male homosexuality may be genetic. Researchers early noted that the pedigrees (family trees) of homosexuals
showed that trait in the gay man's mother's brothers and in the sons of the mother's sisters significantly more frequently than in non-related males.

From Biology 101 you may recognize the above pattern as being almost identical to males' inheritance of color-blindness, hemophilia, and a few other traits via a single recessive gene on the one and only maternal X chromosome that the son has inherited (obviously he has gotten his Y chromosome from his father). If that is true, then the grandmother, mother and maternal aunts' X chromosomes become suspect. Some geneticists, Hamer et al. (1993) even think that they have pinpointed a site on the X chromosome. "This region is known as “Xq28”, because it is located at the 28th region of the right arm (q) of the X chromosome. In correlational studies, there was found to be a .82 correlation between homosexuality and Xq28, " as per an Ask Jeeves search.
Or see: www.netpci.com/~tttbbs/EPN-1/Articles/Articles-Homo/gaygene1.html

In short, the so called life style, IMHO, is not a style at all but is inherited not too unlike how we have inherited eye color, skin pigmentation, handedness, etc. and thus forms no natural foundation for discrimination, and it is they who discriminate who are the ones who have consciously and voluntarily chosen an "unatural and wrong" style.

[savafan]

Dave Pallone was also a gay MLB umpire, and according to his book, I think it was titled Behind the Mask, he says there are a lot of homosexuals in baseball.

[RANDY IN INDY]

Maybe it's what you do with your inheritance that matters.

Some people may have a gene that causes them to become alcoholics. That tends to run in families as well. Does that make it ok to be an alcaholic? Some have a gene that would cause them to have a terrible temper. Does that make it ok to beat their wives and children?

[cincinnati chili]

Originally posted by RANDY IN CHAR NC
Maybe it's what you do with your inheritance that matters.

Some people may have a gene that causes them to become alcoholics. That tends to run in families as well. Does that make it ok to be an alcaholic? Some have a gene that would cause them to have a terrible temper. Does that make it ok to beat their wives and children?

All of those things hurt other people. Homosexuality hurts nobody.

I realize I'm not going to change your opinion or others who believe God thinks it's wrong. But there's a clear difference vis a vis the tradition that people should have the right to do things that don't infringe on the rights of othere.

[Far East]

Maybe it's what you do with your inheritance that matters.

So ... if you've inherited a tendency to be heterosexual, I suppose you can abstain? Good luck! That's what you seem to be asking the gays to do.

[Unassisted]

Well, I'm convinced that no opinions are going to change as a result of this thread. :yawn: I vote for the lock.

[paulrichjr]

Originally posted by Far East
I've been out of town all weekend, I see that this thread is quite long, but feel that I can not let this opportunity slide.

First off, as you can tell from the foregoing diverse posts the "unnatural and wrong" concept is debatable.

Secondly, the drug addict and steroid user virtually have acted voluntarily (at least in the beginning) and have made a conscious decision having led them to their plight.

....., etc. and thus forms no natural foundation for discrimination, and it is they who discriminate who are the ones who have consciously and voluntarily chosen an "unatural and wrong" style.

Sorry but a lot of research done since this study says that this is bull....

Here is an example from ABC News...
ABC NEWS.com
April 22, 1999 Claudine Chamberlain



Where Did The 'Gay Gene' Go?
By Claudine Chamberlain
ABCNEWS.com
April 22 — It’s a seemingly endless debate: Why are some people attracted to the opposite sex, while others are drawn to their own gender? Thanks to new research published today, that question just got even harder to answer.
A team of researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada has found no evidence of the so-called “gay gene,” directly contradicting studies from 1993 and ’95 that pinpointed a specific genetic marker on the X chromosome linked to homosexuality in men.
Whether genes play a part in sexual orientation has long been a hot button topic for people who support or oppose gay rights. If gays and lesbians are biologically predisposed to homosexuality — through their genes or some other way — that makes for a stronger case against discrimination.
That’s why the gay community welcomed the 1993 study by biologist Dean Hamer of the National Cancer Institute. Hamer found that in 40 pairs of gay brothers, 33 had the same set of DNA sequences in a region of the chromosome called Xq28....

You can read the rest here... http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a371fcd675dbd.htm

Here is another article written by a lesbian that basically says it is a choice not biology that makes us like we are... I found some of it interesting because she admits that she debunks a lot of the lesbians arguments and admits to doing so...

http://staffweb.lib.uiowa.edu/ktonel...es/Biology.htm

There are many articles that dispute these claims on the internet to read as well in print. http://www.queerbychoice.com/gaygenelinks.html

This argument on biology does not hold because some similar research says that criminals are genetically predisposed to be rapists or other things. I realize that homosexuality is between two consenting adults (we hope) and a rapists is not but if it is unnatural which obviously it is if you just look at a male and females body then we do not have to accept it as normal behavior. Neither do we accept the rapists as normal behavior. I don't believe that laws should be passed to forbid it. I also don't think Bud Selig should force teams to accept it as normal when it is not.

I also don't understand the deal on this when not one player has ever come out while playing and stated that he was gay. What do we want to do? Have a coming out and tell all the players "Hey if you are gay come out in the open and we will applaud you." Why do we care? The best thing for the guy to do would be to shut up and play. It would be a distraction on his team and upon his entire career. Why should he feel the need to put himself or his team through this?

[J "Cooper"]

So then we can assume that teammates who advocate anything for the good of the team, would not be oppossed to a fellow player "coming out". They would not say anything negative or derogatory towards the gay player, correct? I mean a good teammate wouldn't want to be a distraction to the team, right?

A good teammate would be like Davy Lopes and just shrug it off like no big deal so as not to make it a distraction to the team. Or would he instead be like a young John Rocker who sure as heck made it about the team. I guess he was worried about all this stuff becoming a distraction...uh...never mind.

[Doc. Scott]

It's really strange that baseball clubhouses seem so much *less* progressive in 2004.

Anyone who's read Ball Four should remember the descriptions of the ways in which the '69 Pilots were clowning around in the locker room. And Jim Bouton acts like it happened on every team back then, and no one thought it was particularly weird. Could it be that the players assumed everyone was straight (of course, they weren't), and were therefore much more comfortable with themselves? Could the source of all this newfound homophobia be simply suspicion between teammates? (And say whatever you want through the rose-colored glasses, boomers, but mainstream society was not more liberal in 1969 than it is in 2004.)