Skating around the issue - Chicago Sun Times Commentary

Skating around the issue

February 19, 2006

BY KEVIN NANCE Staff Reporter
Copyright by the Chicago Sun Times


To be fair, no one in the media -- not even Rudy Galindo, who was extensively quoted in a controversial Chicago Tribune article last week -- has said flat-out that Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir is gay.

Then again, no one had to.

The innuendo about Weir's sexual orientation was so thick in the past few weeks that the media might as well have slapped a pink triangle on the skater's forehead. A quick database search of major print media outlets turned up 160 uses of the word "flamboyant" to describe Weir in the past 90 days, with several sports reporters describing his failure to win an Olympic medal this week as a "flameout" or other variations on the word "flaming." (The controversial Olympian Bode Miller, by contrast, was typically described as "reckless" or "rebellious.")

Galindo, a former U.S. figure skating champion and openly gay man who admitted he's angry at Weir for what he views as the younger skater's having copied his choreography, didn't bother with code language. Instead he went straight for Weir's jugular with a fistful of gay stereotypes: "He's drinking tea with his pinkie finger in the air, and he's so over the top and feminine, why is everybody asking him about his 'style' and not just ask him if he's gay?"

Good question, but the answers may not be to the liking of Galindo, not to mention some journalists.

"The first question is: What's the journalistic purpose of reporting someone's sexual orientation, especially against that person's will -- why does it matter?" says Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar and media ethicist at the Poynter Institute, a leading journalism research group. "I think the answer has to be more than, 'It's just interesting.' A news organization that publishes very private information like that, even about public figures, has a responsibility to be transparent about their news judgment."

Clark and other media watchdogs note that while Galindo voluntarily disclosed his own sexual orientation, Weir has so far chosen to keep his private life private -- most recently at a press conference on Thursday, in which he was asked about the Tribune article and a related online poll. "People could be saying, 'Oh, let's poll about Bode Miller. Let's poll about Michelle Kwan being a lesbian,' something like that," Weir said. "Who I sleep with doesn't affect what I'm doing on the ice or what I'm doing in a press conference."

"I think Johnny Weir has it about right," says Lee Wilkins, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and associate editor of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics. "As a reader or viewer, I don't think it matters a hill of beans if athletes in any sport are gay or straight or whatever. What does that have to do with their athletic ability?"

In recent years, Wilkins says, a consensus has formed within the journalism profession that certain details should be omitted from stories unless they have a direct bearing on the topic at hand. "We no longer print 'Two black armed men held up a 7-Eleven,' unless those people are still at large and the purpose is to alert the citizenry to call the cops. Even then, you'd also include other identifiers such as their age and what clothes they were wearing. Frankly, I don't see any difference, ethically or in terms of news judgment, between that and sexual orientation."

Weir 'a new type of man'

Not everyone agrees, including some gay journalists. Bruce Steele, editor-in-chief of the Advocate, the national gay and lesbian magazine, sees nothing inappropriate about asking celebrities and athletes about their sexual orientation.

"The standards should be equal between gay people and heterosexuals, and straight people are asked all the time about their love lives," Steele says. "There's nothing wrong with asking, because having someone ask about your sexual orientation is not an attack these days; sexuality is increasingly a neutral characteristic. Of course, there's also nothing wrong with saying 'No, I don't want to answer.' "

As for continuing to ask the question when it's already been answered, Steele again defends the practice. "I don't know anything about Johnny Weir's sexuality, but I do know that many celebrities eventually do come out of the closet, and you'll never know when they're going to answer the question unless you keep asking."

That doesn't sit well with Kevin Boyer, spokesman for the Gay Games, an international competition for gay and lesbian athletes which opens in Chicago in July.

"If Johnny Weir has been asked and he's given a response, then they shouldn't ask him again," Boyer says. "And if people continue to report in a way that uses innuendo that implies that he's gay, then that is inappropriate. The implication there is that a person must be gay because of a way he speaks or dresses or skates, which just feeds into the stereotypes. If Johnny Weir has decided that his sexuality is nobody's business but his own, I think that's perfectly legitimate, and if he's decided to just let people think what they want, that's great too. It may be that Weir is a new type of man whose sexual orientation is just not important."

It may also be, Boyer adds, that Weir is "teaching us all a lesson: that it doesn't matter, and that if the question is repeatedly asked, it says more about the questioner than it does the answerer. And when that questioner is a journalist, another question needs to be asked: Is there something in the reporter that needs examining? I think many of them look at this topic as just titillating, and it's an issue for them, not necessarily for the athletes."

Pushing the envelope

Then there's the matter of the outspoken Weir's own statements, which strike some as inviting questions about his sexual orientation; last week, for example, he described himself as "princessy" about his lodging arrangements. As Sun-Times sports columnist Greg Couch put it, "... [H]e is so openly flamboyant, so effeminate in a flaunting sort of way, that he's a test of the homophobic, not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that crowd."

Some argue that Weir's not exactly understated taste in costumes encourages speculation as well. But Steele notes that many skaters, including some who are married with children, have pushed the fashion envelope.

On the other hand, Weir can be provocative -- by using the nickname "Tinkerbell," for example -- in a way that almost dares journalists to ask about his sexuality.

"It seems that he's being playful about it, and the nature of the playfulness is such that it's hard to tell if he's doing it to tease or make a statement about himself," Boyer says. "It seems to be the nature of his personality that he enjoys keeping people guessing. But if you do that, you run the risk that someone will write about what you're being playful about. That said, I don't think it's appropriate to out people, and it does seem that the [Tribune] reporter went beyond what's tasteful."

Helen Carroll, a former national championship-winning basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Asheville who now coordinates the National Center for Lesbian Rights' Sports Project, agrees.

"It's up to the person to say what they want to say about who they are. Whether a person is gay or lesbian is a very sensitive in athletics, always has been. It's possible that Johnny Weir wants to be completely out but fears the judges' response in terms of the points they award him. If so, I think that makes sense. What we need is an atmosphere where anybody can say that, but we don't have it yet."

Truth and consequences

Which leads to another significant question in Journalism Ethics 101: What harm could come to an athlete if he or she is outed?

"I think journalists have to consider what consequences could come from publishing an athlete's sexual orientation, and there may be different answers in particular situations," Clark said. "If a journalist were about to out a member of the Chicago Bears, I think that the stigma against homosexuality that continues to exist in male mainstream sports such as football would make the consequences of publication much more significant than if I report that, gee whiz, another male ice skater is gay.

"Given the stigma that exists within the subculture of the NFL, the consequences to the career and life to that particular athlete could be devastating. They might lose their career. They might have to leave. They might be the object of violence, inside or outside the locker room. Do you know of any figure skater who's thought to be gay who would be at some kind of social or athletic or commercial disadvantage? I'm not sure."

Apparently, many professional figure skaters don't agree. "They see just as much career danger in coming out as a football player might," Steele noted. "The career options for a retired Olympic skater are touring the country as part of a skating program that plays probably more often in the heartland than what might be considered the gay-friendly fringes. When you're done competing, you need to appeal to the broadest audience possible."

And for broader reasons, Wilkins vehemently rejects Clark's premise.

"I usually agree with Roy Peter, but I'm sorry, but I just can't buy that one," she says. "I don't agree with the assumption that gay people are subject to violence only in particular settings. My goodness, we just had that young man arrested for going into a gay bar [in Massachusetts] with a baseball bat. There are too many concrete instances where gay people have been preyed upon to say what Roy is saying. For further reference, see 'Brokeback Mountain,' and I will remind people that in the late 1980s, there was a young man [Matthew Shepard] bludgeoned to death in Wyoming because he was gay. We have not changed that much."

And for Boyer, there's a crucial distinction between speculating about the apparently disproportionate presence of gays and lesbians in particular sports -- such as ice skating or women's golf -- and speculating about the sexual orientation of an individual athlete.

"The implication that it's worse for a football player than for a figure skater suggests that it's the reporter who gets to decide which is worse, the reporter who decides that one sport is more girly than another, and that therefore it's OK to out people," he says. "I just don't buy that as a more ethical position, because the reporter doesn't know what the figure skater's family is like, or what impact it might have on sponsorships, or whether it might be dangerous in some way. It's not just about a sport. It's about people, and reporters should remember that."

knance@suntimes.com

TALKING IN FLAMBOYANT CODE

The nation's sports writers were were virtually unanimous in their choice of a favorite adjective to describe Olympic skater Johnny Weir in the past few weeks. The word was "flamboyant," which Bruce Steele, editor of the national gay and lesbian magazine the Advocate, calls "a code word for a gay-appearing man."


SOME EXAMPLES (OUR EMPHASIS):



"Thursday night, the latest flamboyant American star, Johnny Weir, flamed out when it mattered at the Olympic Games."
Joe Posnanski, Kansas City Star


"Weir, 21, of Newark, Del., second after the short program, a skater with uncommon artistry and lyricism, is also a flamboyant soul, candid and outgoing, seemingly unafraid to speak his mind or wear his emotions on his sleeves. Which, when he skates, are typically covered in lace, mesh and rhinestones."
Alan Abrahamson, Los Angeles Times


"Johnny Weir, America's best, faint hope for a men's figure skating medal, enjoys knocking people over with flamboyant style, with his costumes (it's a scarf, he lectures, not a boa)."
Filip Bondy, New York Daily News


"But with the help of her partner, Zhang Dan got up and somehow finished the routine. No sympathy call this, the Chinese were awarded silver as the crowd roared its approval. The flamboyant American figure skater Johnny Weir spoke for the world when he said, 'I have such respect for her pushing through it and nailing down the silver medal. I would buy her diamonds if I could afford it.' "
Michael Hunt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Kevin Nance