There are several important issues at stake for gays and lesbians in America this week, as churches continue to defrock or penalize gay and lesbian clergy, the Supreme Court rules on whether transgender employees can make discrimination claims, and voters in several states decide whether to grant or deny gays and lesbians basic civil rights.
But who cares about all that boring stuff, when there’s real news happening?
I’m referring, of course, to the news the mainstream media can’t seem to get enough of: the NFL cheerleaders busted this weekend for having lesbian sex.
Technically, the two Carolina Panther cheerleaders–Renee Thomas, 20, of Pittsboro, N.C., and Angela Keathley, 26, of Belmont, N.C.–were arrested last weekend not for allegedly having sex with each other, but for doing it in a bathroom stall at a bar, then punching one of several complaining patrons waiting to use the restroom, and resisting arrest for disorderly conduct and assault. All while very, very drunk.
Both women spent the night in jail, and were released on bail the next day–but not before Thomas had passed herself off to police as another cheerleader, Kristin Owen, whose ID she had borrowed in order to get into the nightclub while Owen was out of the state at a wedding. Now in addition to assault, Thomas faces charges of giving a false name and causing harm to another a third-degree felony punishable by probation or a jail term of 1 to 5 years.
Both cheerleaders were kicked off the Carolina Panthers cheerleading squad Monday for violating a signed code that bans conduct embarrassing to the team or organization (also known as the “don’t get caught having lesbian sex in public” code).
Lesbian sex, cheerleaders, and cops? This is manna from heaven to the mainstream news outlets, who suddenly have license to write about a topic they would normally never get past their editors. As Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy told the Florida’s St. Petersburg Times, “Alcohol, sex and cheerleaders are apparently the ingredients for a hot story…because I am getting flooded with calls.”
“Panthers cheerleaders arrested in bar sex incident”, proclaims CNN, and “Cheerleaders reportedly had sex in stalls”, screams the headline of MSNBC’s article about the incident, which is accompanied by a link to a video of the two women leaving the courthouse, with the helpful subtitle “Too Much Cheer?”
Others have employed more creative headlines, like “Cheerleaders Gone Wild!” (San Jose Mercury News), “Frisky cheerleaders canned” (Boston Herald), and my personal favorite, “Be Aggressive! B-e Aggressive!” (Seattle PI).
Now a day into the story, the media has even begun covering the media blitz itself as news. “Panthers’ cheerleader sex scandal creating major buzz”, headlines another San Jose Mercury story, which goes on to report that this cheerleader incident “ranked among the top three most-viewed in Charlotte.com’s nine-year history. On ESPN.com, more people e-mailed it to friends Monday than any other story.
“The Panthers’ Web site, which features photos of its cheerleaders, bent under so many hits that it was shut down.”
St. Petersburg Times headlined their coverage of the event with “Cheerleader case captivates fans worldwide”, reporting that “Even British tabloid reporters called the Tampa Police Department’s public information office, where phones on Monday rang and rang.”
Forget all that boring gay-rights stuff. This is a lesbian story the news media can really get behind!
So what’s the problem? The story is entertaining. It’s news. I’ll admit, I got a good laugh out of reading about it. So why shouldn’t the news outlets have a field day with it?
The problem is, the mainstream media doesn’t cover stories about heterosexual couples getting busted for having sex in a bar bathroom, even though I’d be willing to bet that happens far more often than women secretly (or not so secretly, in this case) hooking up with each other in public bathrooms.
And even if they did cover it, it wouldn’t make the national news. As one Florida AfterEllen.com reader wrote in to say, “I noticed this story first on my local NBC news, and then making headlines on Yahoo….I don’t see any headlines covering all the sordid heterosexual activities in bar bathrooms performed by athletes (or their enthusiastic, scantily-clad supporters). It doesn’t say much for lesbian visibility.”
The problem is, the right wing likes to scare heterosexuals into voting away our rights by portraying gays and lesbians as sex maniacs, and the mainstream media enables them to do that with disproportionate and sensationalized coverage like this.
Of course, the media is covering this story so extensively in part because Americans clearly prefer to read about lesbian cheerleaders more than Texas’s anti-gay marriage amendment. At least, if phones ringing off hooks and websites crashing are any indication.
But this is just another example of the double-standard Americans have when it comes to lesbians.
As Kim Ficera mentioned in her recent column about the media coverage of the Sheryl Swoopes news, “I can’t keep up with the hypocrisy. Do Americans hate lesbians or love lesbians? Lesbians who want to get married, want to adopt, and want equal rights are all bad; but lesbians in lingerie, lesbians in videos, straight women who play lesbians on TV, and now lesbians with basketballs, are all good.”
So are lesbian cheerleaders, apparently–or cheerleaders we want to believe are lesbians, anyway.
As long as they don’t try to get married.
