Proud To Play – East Lansing LGBT Community Sends A Message

Portland supporters have a history of marginalizing protesters; ignoring the protests and calling activists “non-existent”. It’s safe to say that the East Lansing LGBT community wasn’t so easily dismissed. In addition to The State News and Pridesource.com, the event generated mainstream media coverage through WLNS channel 6, WILX channel 10, and the Lansing State Journal. One Lansing resident created awareness of the issue by working her way through the stands wearing signs that read “shameless bigot” and “fire me”. “I think that our presence was definitely noticed by other fans, and both teams“, said Megan Gallagher, one of the organizers.

Though the Penn State LGBT community has held multiple demonstrations at home, the MSU game was the first protest that Coach Portland faced on the road. Penn State University student Ed Rowe was pleased with the turnout in East Lansing. “It's encouraging to know that others around the country are passionate about fixing the problem of homophobia in collegiate athletics, and I know it energized me to do more at Penn State.”

Rowe is a member of the Penn State Rainbow Roundtable, a non-sanctioned group whose purpose includes holding Penn State University accountable to its own non-discrimination policies. Last December, the Rainbow Roundtable created binders filled with information about the Harris-Portland issue, and distributed them to the LBGTA groups at other Big Ten schools. The binders were called Action 53 Toolkits, out of respect to Jennifer Harris, who wore number 53 when playing for Penn State. The East Lansing and Michigan State University communities were the first to answer the call for support.

Rowe hopes that other universities will follow in the steps of MSU. “Now that they have our information binders, we hope that more schools will be able to accomplish something along the lines of what Michigan State did.”

Megan Gallagher credits the success of the MSU protest to many different people. “This protest was organized mainly through word of mouth, no organization at MSU officially ran it, although many people from various campus groups were there.” The non-MSU community was also important to the success of the event. Penny Gardner of Michigan Equality was instrumental in getting supporters to the game, and her “Lavender Menace” t-shirts were very popular with the fans. Pridesource was a source of information for the members of the LGBT community who are not affiliated with MSU or any other organizations. Many people received word of the protest through progressive action email alerts.

In gathering to show their support for the Penn State athletes, the protesters drew strength and inspiration from each other as well. One woman was moved by all of the lavender and rainbow colored shirts in the arena. “It was a beautiful thing.” Another was inspired by the rainbow umbrella that Penny Gardner held during the game. “To me that signifies that we are all under the umbrella and in it together. The rainbow signifies that everyone belongs, no matter your race, color, creed, political or sexual persuasion. It doesn't matter if your straight, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender or Barney the purple dinosaur, we are all in this together.”

Bottom line: the activists had a great time. “Sparty even hung out with us. It was awesome.”