I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition earlier, and they were talking about Michael Sam. Sam, if you haven’t heard, is a running back for the University of Missouri’s football team, and yesterday he came out publicly as gay. He’s widely expected to be drafted by the National Football League this spring, and likely to become the first openly gay male player in any of the country’s big three professional sports leagues as a result.
In discussing Sam’s prospects, John Branch of the New York Times told co-host Renee Montagne that his announcement, coming as it did before Sam has secured an NFL contract, was made ”potentially at the risk of his professional career.”
“You kind of wonder today,” Montagne replied, “with anti-discrimination laws and whatnot, if he would be hurt.”
There are a couple of problems with what Montagne said. First, of course, there’s the fact that proving discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in this context would be incredibly difficult. If no team chooses to offer him a slot, who does he sue? All of them? And with what evidence?
But even if we set that aside, there’s a bigger problem: The United States has no federal law protecting gay people from discrimination in employment, and more than half of the NFL’s teams — eighteen out of thirty-two — play in places where there are no state laws banning such discrimination either.
Only twenty-one American states ban anti-gay workplace discrimination, and
