Nasty Bigots, Discriminating Based on Sexual Orientation

Nasty Bigots, Discriminating Based on Sexual Orientation

But not the way that you might think. Actually, I don't know what the truth of this one is. Perhaps the coach is telling the truth. Perhaps the player is telling the truth. If this wasn't a public institution, it wouldn't be a fit subject for governmental action. From February 11, 2009 WOOD-TV:

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP) - Central Michigan and its women's basketball coach are being sued by a former player, who claims her heterosexuality was a factor in losing a scholarship after two seasons.

Brooke Heike said she fell out of favor with Sue Guevara immediately after the coach was hired in 2007.

Heike said Guevara told her she wore too much makeup and was not the coach's "type." That meant she wasn't a lesbian, according to a lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Bay City.

The former Romeo High School star lost her scholarship after the 2007-08 season.

"I didn't feel that she did anything to improve herself after being told over and over what she needed to do," Guevara told an appeals committee last June.

Heike's lawsuit claims the appeals panel "simply rubber-stamped defendant Guevara's bad-faith decision to deprive plaintiff of her scholarship and dismiss her from the team" for reasons unrelated to basketball.

I really don't know which to believe. I know that when I lived in California, Napa College settled out of court with a psychology professor who said that he was discriminated against in employment because he was heterosexual. The only overt discrimination in sexual orientation that I have ever seen was in an ad in the Sonoma State University student newspaper--where a gay resort out on the Russian River specifically requested, "gay or bi preferred" for a copywriter. And considering the nature of the employer, and the need to connect to a particular customer base, I can't say that there was anything particularly absurd about that requirement.

What consenting adults do in private should not be the government's business--and it doesn't matter if it is sodomy or employment.

UPDATE: Read through the hundreds of comments. Many of them report either personally being pushed off a women's college athletic team for being straight, or of family members having this happen. Even better, someone found a news story from several years back where the coach made remarks that match up with what the plaintiff is alleging. From the March 17, 2003 Michigan Daily (which seems to be a student paper):

Mandy Stowe, who suddenly left the program during her sophomore year (1998-99) and later became the 2000-01 Midwestern Collegiate Conference Newcomer of the Year at Wisconsin-Green Bay, had an even worse relationship with Guevara than others that left. Unlike the other players, Stowe thought Guevara cared too much about her personal life.
"She wouldn't like it if my pants were too tight, or I wore too much makeup," Stowe said. "One time I went to a tanning booth, and she said I was more committed to tanning than basketball," Stowe later added.
"I really started hating basketball, going to the gym and being near the coaches."

Imagine if a male employer made remarks like that about what a female employee did away from work--and the female employee alleged sexual harassment. Would anyone not see these remarks as showing an inappropriate level of interest?