Brittney Griner Loves Baylor University, But Its Anti-Gay Policies Hurt Her and the School

[DonViejo]

By Evin Demirel

Brittney Griner was a high-school basketball player who'd already been out for two years when she first told her soon-to-be college coach she was gay. She wondered if Kim Mulkey, head coach of the Lady Bears of Baptist-affiliated Baylor University, would mind she was lesbian.

“Big Girl, I don't care what you are,” Griner recalls Mulkey saying in her new memoir, In My Skin. “You can be black, white, blue, purple, whatever. As long as you come here and do what you need to do and hoop, I don't care."

For the most part, Griner did what she needed to do in her four years at Baylor. The Houston native left as the all-time NCAA leader in blocked shots, a three-time AP All-American, and two-time national player of the year. She and fellow Texan Odyssey Sims led Baylor to the 2012 national title after a 40-and-0 season. This record is all the more astounding because it comes during a century when Connecticut has won eight of 15 national titles.

Griner was simply the most dominant force the women's college game has ever seen. Now she’s on the cusp of breaking out in her second year of WNBA play. Most colleges would naturally tout their ties to Griner, but Baylor is not most colleges. The Waco, Texas-based university has one of the few powerhouse Division I athletic departments that officially discourages homosexuality. Baylor’s student handbook denounces all forms of sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage—including pre-marital straight sex and homosexuality of any kind. Now the fact that Baylor produced one of America’s most famous (and now outspoken) LGBTQ athletes imperils its future as a women’s basketball juggernaut.

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[theHandpuppet]

1. But of course the question I've always had....

Why Baylor, of all places? I know that women's basketball programs are notoriously homophobic (I knew a gay player at Penn State and I wouldn't have gone there had someone offered me a truckload of money) but why choose one specifically geared towards RW bigots, like Baylor?

[Ilsa]

2. I wonder what other scholarship offers she received?

Maybe they were in places too far from her sources of emotional support.

[theHandpuppet]

3. Like kids don't go away to college?

Sorry, can't relate to that unless there was some situation in her immediate family that necessitated her being close to home.

[Ilsa]

4. Maybe if a gay teen has the support of family,

She might not want to be too far from them. Eighteen is still a young difficult age.

[theHandpuppet]

5. For a gay teen in that much need of a family's support...

... I would think the last thing she needs is to attend a conservative, Baptist university. I was a gay teen myself once and went away to college at 17. I was a poor kid from a small hillbilly town, didn't drive, had to take a room in a boarding house, knew absolutely no one where I was going -- and couldn't wait to see what the world was truly about! I'm sure Griner, the Houston native, could have had her choice of scholarships. So to hear her complain now about Baylor is a bit odd. It's like someone accepting a scholarship to Liberty University and then acting surprised and insulted when the institution simply proves what they've been all along -- a conservative, religious university.

[Ilsa]

6. There is no way of knowing what she was told about Baylor

before accepting their scholarship unless she tells us. As conservative as we believe they are, I've heard alumni refer to their religion professors as "heretics." Maybe she was told that they were a "liberal" private baptist university. Culture at a university like this can ebb and flow over the years in either direction depending on leadership, the student body, and the board of regents.

Maybe she wanted to stay closer to Houston so that she was only a couple of hours away by car. Maybe she had a girlfriend near Waco and that's why she went there.

She said she was bullied a lot as a child. Maybe family support was more important to her than it was to you. Not everyone wants to leave home at 18. I did a year+ at a local college before going to university, and I know many others who did the same.

[theHandpuppet]

7. Then she accepted the trade-off

If the scenario you propose is true, then she accepted the trade-off and it's a bit odd to hear her complain about it now. It's not as if Baylor's reputation is a huge secret, especially to someone from Texas.

[joeybee12]

8. Mulkey, the coach, and the biggest ahole in the women's game, got

nabbed for recruiting violations in her efforts to get Griner...the penalty was a slap on the wrist, basically, and far too lenient, but the point is Mulkey really went after her, and Britney was a kid, and she probably figured, if the Coach is so accepting (which the asshole Mulkey is not, but that's another story), she probably figured the students and school would be...she was young, she didn't know any better.