Outsports shares a heartbreaking account of rampant homophobia in deep rural Louisiana by a gay high school football official.
Although Outsports did confirm the man’s identity, he remains anonymous out of fear of being attacked and losing his job.
Just a sample of the man’s journey through the bigoted world of sports officiating in the South:
Being gay in the Bible Belt has been rough for me, even more so since I’m as deep in the South as you can get. Rural southern Louisiana is somewhere you don’t want to be known as being gay. You will be treated like a third-class citizen because people think there is something wrong with being gay. So it came as no shock to me when I started officiating that I would hear gay slurs from fans and other officials, even though no one knew my secret.
One of my first years as an official I was on a football playoff crew headed to northwest Louisiana for a game, a four-hour drive away. Somehow the conversation in the van turned to gay rights. I had to listen to the guys rant and rave about how it is an abomination.
“Fags are what’s wrong with this country.”
“I don’t see what’s so desirable about a man’s ass.”
“How can a real man not want to be with a beautiful babe?”
“There is something wrong with them, probably was abused growing up.”
And it just gets worse from there.
The official recounts an episode where a mother thought she saw an official kiss another man as he got out of his car, and was immediately labeled a “pedophile.” Not long after parents began passing out bumper stickers that said, “Fags = sex offenders.”
Another official was demonized as “gay” for having a naturally high-pitched voice. That made him a target.
“That cocksucker will never work with me again,” the white hat said. “His fucking gay ass did nothing but give us problems. That little cocksucker even had the audacity to tell me that I missed a call! I told him that he could go fuck himself, because I’m sure he has his own dildo to do it with.”
In the end, the anonymous official says he’s thought about leaving the South many times but family and friends keep him there.
I have thought about leaving Louisiana many times, but various things have kept me here, from family to work. It always seems as if I’m just not meant to leave. Now that we have marriage equality, I know things will continue to change. I know people will become more accepting. I’ve even started coming out to close friends and family members.
Make sure you read the entire account. While life does get better, in many parts of the country it gets lost how ugly homophobia can be.
