Salon.com on lesbophobia in sport

If you go by the official record, Sherri Murrell of Portland State University is the only lesbian coach in Division One women's basketball. She is, after all, the first and only coach to come out. The first and only, out of more than 350 teams.

One lesbian coach. Do you believe it?

Coach Murrell herself said that fear is thick for other gay coaches. "There's a lot of negative recruiting going on right now," she said in a recent interview. That is, coaches competing for the best talent will dismiss another program as being a haven for dykes, playing on the homophobia of prospective athletes and their families, and so make their own program supposedly moret appealing. Says Murrell: "You may not lose your job because of discrimination, but you may lose your job because all the sudden people are saying, don't go to that program because coach is a lesbian and then boom the program goes downhill. You lose your job because the program is not successful."

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