Friday, January 2, 2009

Latter Day Protest? Proposition 8 and Sports

Folks – the below piece is in the new issue of the Progressive.

You can leave comments at:

http://edgeofsports.com/2008-12-29-399/index.html

In struggle and sports
Dave Z

Latter Day Protest? Proposition 8 and Sports
By Dave Zirin

As supporters of Gay Marriage are have discovered, it's never easy to be on the Mormon Church's enemies list. The Church of Latter Day Saints backed the anti-Gay Marriage Proposition 8 in California with out-of-state funds, and gave the right a heartbreaking victory this past election cycle. But the Mormon Church has been challenged in the past. Just ask Bob Beamon.

If you know Beamon's name it's almost certainly because he won the long jump gold medal in legendary fashion at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Beamon leapt 29 feet, 2.5 inches, a record that held for twenty-three years. Great Britain's Lynn Davies told Beamon afterwards, "You have destroyed this event." This is because Beamon was not only the first long jumper to break 29 feet, he was the first to break 28.

But you may not know that Beamon almost never made it to Mexico City. Along with eight other teammates, Beamon had his track and field scholarship revoked from the University of Texas at El Paso, the previous year. They had refused to compete against Brigham Young University. Beamon and his teammates were protesting the racist practices of the Mormon Church, and their coach at UTEP, Wayne Vanderburge, made them pay the ultimate price.

They weren't alone. As tennis great Arthur Ashe wrote in his book, Hard Road to Glory, "In October 1969, fourteen black [football] players at the University of Wyoming publicly criticized the Mormon Church and appealed to their coach, Lloyd Eaton, to support their right not to play against Brigham Young University. . . . The Mormon religion at the time taught that blacks could not attain to the priesthood, and that they were tainted by the curse of Ham, a biblical figure. Eaton, however, summarily dropped all fourteen players from the squad."

The players, though, didn't take their expulsion lying down. They called themselves the Black 14 and sued for damages with the support of the NAACP. In an October 25th game against San Jose State, the entire San Jose team wore black armbands to support the 14.

One aftershock of this episode was in November 1969, when Stanford University President Kenneth Pitzer suspended athletic relations with BYU, announcing that Stanford would honor what he called an athlete's "Right of Conscience." The "Right of Conscience" allowed athletes to boycott an event which he or she deemed "personally repugnant." As the Associated Press wrote, "Waves of black protest roll toward BYU, assaulting Mormon belief and leaving BYU officials and students, perplexed, hurt, and maybe a little angry."

On June 6th, 1978, as teams were refusing road trips to Utah with greater frequency, and the IRS started to make noises about revoking the church's holy tax-free status, a new revelation came to the Book of Mormon.

Whether a cynical ploy to avoid the taxman or a coincidence touched by God, the results were the same: Black people were now human in the eyes of the Church. African Americans were no longer, as Brigham Young himself once put it, "uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind." The IRS was assuaged, the athletic contests continued, and the church entered a period of remarkable growth.

Similar pressure must be brought to bear on the Mormon Church today for its financing of Proposition 8 in California. One nonprofit crunched the numbers and found that $17.67 million of the $22 million used to pass the anti-gay marriage legislation was funneled through 59,000 Mormon families since August. It was done with the institutional backing of the church, though many pro-gay Mormons have spoken out defiantly against the church's political intervention.

The question now is whether this latest tale of social conflict and the Church of Latter Day Saints will also spill onto the athletic field. Men's athletics have been one of the last proud hamlets of homophobia in our society (although the attitudes of male athletes is more progressive than you might think). But women's sports has been historically more open around issues of sexuality.

Will any women collegians raise the specter of Proposition 8 if they have to travel to the schools of Utah? Will we see the ghosts of Black 14 emerge from the past? If any athletes choose to act, the ramifications could be "Beamonesque."

[Dave Zirin is the author of "A People's History of Sports in the United States" (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

3 comments:

Bot said...

Although not the only religious group opposing same-gender marriage, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has received a great deal of attention concerning their active opposition to marriages for same gender couples. This website (http://GayMormon.net) seeks to help people understand the Church’s stand on this subject, and on marriage in general.

Marriage was ordained by God from the very beginning of time. He created two people, a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. They were married by Him, not just during this lifetime, but forever. Together, they were told to begin a family and raise their children together. From the first days of the earth, God set the pattern for family life—a man and a woman, and, if possible, children. This basic family structure creates an appropriate foundation for all other units of society and for an eternal life.

Mormons teach that gender is an essential part of who we are, and that it was determined long before birth. However, they do not teach that having homosexual inclinations is a sin. Only the practice of homosexuality is a sin. Feelings are not sinful; practice of inappropriate feelings can be.

Members of the church with homosexual inclinations who choose not to act on them or advocate for the acceptance of such actions can be members of the church in full standing. They may hold any role in the church that may be held by any other unmarried person of his or her gender, which means that most positions are open to them.

The church teaches its members to love and to respect those with homosexual inclinations, just as they do anyone else, and make it clear that mistreatment is not tolerated. However, this does not mean they feel inappropriate behavior must be condoned.

Churches are, by nature, in the business of defining right and wrong. If they refuse to do so, to remind people of God’s teachings on any given moral subject, and to stand for something, they have no real reason to exist.

With this in mind, the Mormons, as representatives of God, must take a firm stand on anything that affects the sanctity and well-being of the family, one of God’s most sacred creations. This site will help you understand more about this eternally critical subject.

In order to entirely understand why Mormons object to changing the legal definition of marriage, one must understand a number of critical doctrines of the church. With a complete understanding of these doctrines, while you might still disagree, you will better be able to understand why we feel obligated to fight for the traditional family. Please follow the following path of articles to help you build a foundation for your study.

Child of God—Mormons know that what you consider to be your defining characteristic has a powerful impact on your life.

Mormons with homosexual feelings do not consider same gender attraction to be what defines them. They consider the primary defining factor to be that they are a child of God.

Gender was determined prior to birth. What this means to Mormons struggling with same-gender attraction.

Gay Mormons: A summary of what the church believes about homosexuality

Attitude Toward Trials

Mormons and Marriage: How Mormons view marriage and why they don’t want the legal definition of marriage changed.

Mormons and the Same Sex Marriage Battle

Can Churches Participate in the Political Process?

Is Polygamy a Valid Gay Marriage Argument?

The remaining articles on the site ( http://GayMormon.net ) are about basic beliefs of Mormons, for those who want to know more, and they may be read in any order

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