Being Gay in Major League Baseball

Certain intransigently conservative institutions, such as the U.S. military or professional sports leagues, may not be the barometer of up-to-date national attitudes toward difference and diversity, but they can be important bellwethers of things to come. For example, Harry Truman’s Executive Order 9981 moved, in 1948, to end discrimination in the military by banning the segregation of Army units along color lines. While the order was unpopular in the military, Truman’s move was one of the earliest tangible steps toward the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Another institutional bellwether—one that may have influenced Truman’s decision on military segregation—was the sport of baseball, which had just broken its own color line in 1947.

The slow evolution of prejudices and bigotry in institutions such as the military and baseball are very telling. During the late 70s and early 80s, long after the bulk of Civil Rights Acts had become law, American views of gays remained particularly harsh. The arrival of HIV stirred up all kinds of national phobias, and the 1978 murder of Harvey Milk and an attack against skater Dick Button in Central Park were only two among a spate of homophobic hate crimes. That homosexuals were discriminated against in the workplace is evident in the Department of Defense’s Directive 1332.14, which, in 1981, made the discharge of gay and lesbian soldiers mandatory. Meanwhile, in baseball during that era—as is evident in “Out: The Glenn Burke Story,” a new documentary produced by Doug Harris and Sean Maddison—being gay was widely recognized to be, as one of the era's top stars put it, “a kiss of death for a ballplayer.”

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