How the NCAA Failed the LGBT Community in North Carolina and Houston

National Collegiate Athletic Association Officials Neglected to Issue Statements in Support of Gay Rights Before Houston Repealed HERO, N.C. Passed Hateful Anti-LGBT Law

The NCAA needs to get its head in the game on LGBT rights. 

First, an NCAA official declined a request to issue a statement in support of an Equal Rights Ordinance in Houston, which will host this weekend’s men’s Final Four, before voters repealed the law in November, The Washington Post reports. Then, the NCAA failed to speak out against North Carolina’s hateful new anti-LGBT law before it passed, according to OutSports’ Cyd Zeigler. 

Zeigler calls the NCAA’s statements against the North Carolina law after it passed “utter bullshit,” and alleges that the organization shares responsibility for the law. 

“While the NCAA national office hosts discussions about LGBT athletes and creates manuals on intersectionality, there has been no real weight behind the supportive words,” Zeigler writes. “The NCAA is now trying to put some false post-mortem pressure on the state to reconsider what it’s done, but the fact that the association has not previously made anti-LGBT laws a deal-breaker for hosting postseason events is a complete failure that demonstrates the weaknesses of the NCAA’s structure and backbone.”

After Indiana passed its anti-LGBT religious freedom law last year, the NCAA spoke out against it, prompting lawmakers to pass an emergency “fix.” However, even though North Carolina is arguably just as much of a mecca for college basketball as Indiana, the NCAA didn’t lift a finger to stop the House Bill 2 from passing earlier this month.  

Also last year, the chairman of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, J. Kent “Kenny” Friedman, approached NCAA Vice President Oliver Luck about making a statement in support of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, the WaPo reports. 

Friedman claims Luck’s response was  “something along the lines of he was sure the NCAA would be very concerned about it, but that they do not take an official position on anything before the fact.” 

However, the NCAA is disputing Friedman’s account, saying it was not contacted directly by city officials. 

“Houston officials did not approach the NCAA about the equal rights ordinance,” the NCAA said. “Oliver Luck was asked at a meeting last year about whether the NCAA would move the Final Four from Houston and he replied that there were no such discussions. The NCAA has been very firm on its commitment to the fair treatment of individuals, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

I was among the journalists who contacted the NCAA last year about HERO, but got no response. 

The pro-HERO campaign has been heavily criticized for failing to effectively respond to the transgender bathroom myth, but it’s also strange that supporters of the ordinance couldn’t get Mayor Annise Parker to make a direct, public appeal to the NCAA for help. 

Then again, such an appeal shouldn’t really be be necessary for the NCAA to speak out. 

Zeigler notes that LGBT advocates recently asked the NCAA to kick out schools that have requested Title IX exemptions that allow them to discriminate against LGBT student-athletes. However, the NCAA’s head of diversity and inclusion responded in a letter by referring to the organization’s “diverse membership,” stressing the importance of “preserving individual institutional values,” and blaming Title IX exemptions on the federal government. 

“Discriminatory practices are not part of diversity,” Zeigler writes. “That the NCAA’s head of diversity would claim otherwise speaks encyclopedic volumes about where the institution truly stands on protecting LGBT people: on the sidelines.”

 

 

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