Winner of the Audience Award for best documentary at San Francisco's Frameline 2009, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker's Training Rules, about anti-lesbian discrimination in women's sports, will be screened at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, on Saturday, July 11, at 4:30 p.m. at the Fairfax 1 in West Hollywood. Mosbacher, Yacker, and the film's narrator, long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, will take part in a discussion following the screening.
The 60-minute Training Rules focuses on the women’s basketball program at Pennsylvania State University, where in 2006 student athlete Jennifer Harris filed a lawsuit against the university and Lady Lions basketball head coach, Maureen “Rene” Portland (above, lower photo).
As per the film's press release, "during her 27 years of coaching, Portland enforced three strict rules: no drinking, no drugs and no lesbians." Even young women who were perceived as being gay were dismissed from the team.
"Discrimination in women’s team sports, especially women’s basketball, is a hot-button issue that many programs still only give lip-service to," explains Dee Mosbacher, whose Oscar nod was for the 1994 documentary short Straight from the Heart. "We hope that, by viewing the issue through the lens of this groundbreaking lawsuit, we can begin a discourse that will precipitate a much-needed change in women's sports."
Men's sports should be next in line.
I can see your point, but I'm really not sure if things work exactly that way. Surely there are and have been gay/bi/etc. baseball, football, soccer, etc. players. Who are they? Where are they? Not everyone gets outed; perhaps, in fact, in the world of men's sports very, very few do even though they are or have been there.
Homophobia in men's sports isn't an issue. If it was, then we'd hear about more sports stars being outed (before they retire), right? (…Ugh!)