[Dave Zirin makes a strong case giving the history of the CoLDS and
their racist practices related to African Americans and how these
were overcome via public pressure. Pretty interesting stuff. - Neil]
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 at edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports at gmail.com.]
Live hard,
Neil
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil
obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the
world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war,
and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails
are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are
running and robbing the country. That's our problem.
[howard zinn, 1922-]
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