Separation of church and sport: How Kentucky LGBTQ athletes navigate religious pressures – Courier Journal

Separation of church and sport: How Kentucky LGBTQ athletes navigate religious pressures  Courier Journal

For LGBTQ athletes at Kentucky high schools and colleges, the path to acceptance can be complicated by religious and cultural influences.

In every fan base, there are a handful of die-hard supporters who treat sports as gospel — fans who live or die with every play, schedule their weeks around game days and idolize their chosen team.

The religious and cultural significance of sport is part of what makes it great, but it can also be a barrier to LGBTQ athletes hoping to come out in Kentucky, national experts and athletes say. 

Even as policies and attitudes nationwide have become more accepting of LGBTQ people, high school and college sports in Kentucky and other Southern states remain unwelcoming to queer athletes due to noninclusive policies and religious influences. 

Catholic schools dominate athletics in Louisville and other parts of the state. Even at public schools, sports often marry team activities with pregame prayers, Bible studies or clubs like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), an international, nonprofit sports ministry program. 

“Sport is often described as religion,” said Meg Hancock, a professor and chair of the University of Louisville health and sport sciences department whose research on gender and sport is nationally recognized. “We worship our teams, we worship our coaches, we worship our athletes. What does that mean then when the athlete that you worship, you now know something else about that conflicts with your religious doctrine?” 

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Louisville native Meredith Marsh was confronted with this early on when her parents kicked her older sister out of the house for being gay. 

Marsh, then only 12, knew she was a lesbian, too, but didn’t want to risk the same fate.

Throughout high school, Marsh participated in FCA, an organization with headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, that uses sport as a platform for spreading Christian gospel. FCA’s website says its vision is “to see the world transformed by Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes.” 

Founded in 1954, FCA has chapters on middle school, high school and college campuses in more than 50 Kentucky counties. 

FCA’s “Statement of Faith” includes a sexual purity section that condemns both extramarital heterosexual sex and any “homosexual act.” Leaders within the organization are required to sign applications acknowledging the policy. 

Madison Kleinhenz, who also grew up in Louisville, said area athletes are indoctrinated in FCA and similar programs at a young age. 

“It’s not hail and brimstones, but they make it clear that homosexuality is a sin,” said Kleinhenz, who identifies as bisexual and who attended Male High School. 

FCA’s national office said in an emailed statement to the Courier Journal that the organization welcomes all participants, but simultaneously underscored its commitment to the sexual purity policy.

“FCA leaders must agree with the FCA biblical statement of faith values that has been in existence for many decades,” the statement said. “FCA believes that all people are of great worth and value to God as they are made in his image, and should be treated with love, dignity and respect.” 

An FCA chapter was established at U of L in 2007 and has since grown to include hundreds of coaches and athletes each year — some of whom, like former track runner Kyle Covert and former rower Gabi Biedenharn, identify as LGBTQ. 

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U of L FCA leader Chris Morgan told the Courier Journal that his campus chapter welcomes queer members, writing, “At FCA we value ALL lives and want to love and serve ALL.” 

Pressed about how he reconciles that view with FCA’s condemnation of homosexuality, and how he ensures U of L’s LGBTQ athletes feel comfortable, Morgan declined to elaborate.

Marsh was still deep in the closet when she arrived at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on a basketball scholarship. She felt pressure to attend church with teammates and act as an FCA leader even as she secretly drove across state lines to visit girlfriends. Privately, she began to question Bible teachings that condemned homosexuality as a sin.

“It’s ironic, but I found safety in the church because that’s where I was raised,” Marsh said. “Every single part of my bubble was surrounded by faith, and I struggled with that massively.”

Marsh eventually came out to her Vanderbilt teammates during her senior season. She came out to her parents in a letter before she went to play professional basketball overseas, and they refused to talk to her for five months, she said.

She has since embraced athletics as her new safe haven, becoming an NCAA basketball coach in North Carolina and then a general manager for a CrossFit gym in Arizona, even as she fell away from the church. 

Even queer athletes who are open about their identities say they can find it difficult to distance themselves from anti-LGBTQ religious doctrines enforced at Catholic schools. 

Swimmer Kennedy Lohman learned that when she attempted to bring a girl as her date to Sacred Heart Academy’s school dance in 2016. Lohman, now a swimmer at the University of Texas at Austin, had faced little resistance from teammates at school and on her Lakeside club team when she came out, but she anticipated a battle when she sat down for a meeting with Sacred Heart’s principal. 

“They basically told us that the Catholic definition of a date was something that could lead to marriage, and the Catholic Church can’t recognize gay marriage,” Lohman said. “… (Sacred Heart) ended up overturning the policy last year.”

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A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Louisville, which continues to ban gay leaders in affiliated schools and churches, told the Courier Journal in an email, “Catholic schools do not discriminate against students participating in athletics due to sexual orientation, and we do not tolerate harassment of any student for any reason.” 

The spokesperson also said that Catholic high schools follow policies of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, or KHSAA, which include “zero-tolerance” for discrimination or harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

But KHSAA’s commissioner says enforcement of those policies is on a school-by-school basis. 

That’s not to say that some athletes can’t strike a balance between religion and their sexual identity. 

Covert, who is gay, and Biedenharn, who is bisexual, attended FCA meetings throughout their college careers at U of L. Covert graduated in 2016 and Biedenharn in 2017. 

They said they heard messages that their lifestyles made them sinners, but that other people still sinned in different ways. 

“I don’t think (FCA) fully defines me, just as I know my sexuality doesn’t fully define me,” said Biedenharn, who attended an all-girls Catholic high school in Cincinnati. “I know my God loves me.” 

Some athletes say their cultural and ethnic background also influences how they expect to be received as LGBTQ. 

Earlier: How Kentucky churches are creating safe spaces for the LGBTQ community

For Berea College tennis players Chris and Michael Malpartida, sons of Peruvian immigrants, their Latino heritage was a major factor in delaying their decisions to come out until college. 

“In Peruvian culture, people are preoccupied with other people’s opinions,” Michael explained. “In Catholic Church you hear all these things about how (being gay) is not right, and being Hispanic you hear all these things like men are the breadwinners. There’s a machismo vibe.” 

“There’s this attitude that’s very prevalent in immigrant culture: ‘We worked so hard to build this, don’t ruin it,'” Chris added. 

Chris’ parents cried when he came out to them on Easter in 2018 during his sophomore year of college — not because they didn’t approve, he said, but because they were worried about the pain being gay would cause him. 

For LGBTQ athletes, trying to navigate the varying degrees of acceptance across religious and cultural lines can be stressful. As Biedenharn put it, “For every 10 people that still love you, one will hate you.” 

Some LGBTQ athletes find ways to successfully integrate multiple aspects of their identity. Others, like Marsh, feel forced to sacrifice parts of their religious or cultural upbringings. 

Either way, they each face the same question: Is coming out worth the risk? 

“We’re living in an age now that is, hopefully, well on the rise for openness and equality and acceptance,” Marsh said. “But you still have to have some courage. … In religion, people get to believe what they want to believe.”

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How we got this story 

Courier Journal sportswriter Danielle Lerner began reporting on the LGBTQ-in-sports issue two years ago, interviewing athletes and experts and reviewing numerous national studies. She joined The Courier Journal in 2016 and last year earned the Louisville men’s basketball beat. She has won multiple local and national journalism awards. The San Jose, Calif., native earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri.

Danielle Lerner: 502-582-4042; dlerner@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @Danielle_Lerner. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/daniellel.

Published 6:17 AM EDT Aug 28, 2019