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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Gender and Sexuality : Labor : Right Wing |
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Standing Up After Fearing Standing Out |
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by Juliet Macur
(No verified email address) |
14 Apr 2005
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"There have been many times that I wanted to quit coaching because of the scrutiny and pressure of being what people wanted me to be," said Stephens, who said she may coach again somewhere. "So in a strange way, I'm glad this all happened. I can be who I really am now." |
LOOMBURG, Tex., April 14 - In this rural East Texas town, where news spreads among the 375 residents through phone calls and gossip-gathering trips to the Shell Mart, Merry Stephens knew the rumors about her.
Stephens is a lesbian, the townsfolk whispered.
Though it was true, Stephens denied it for five years while she was the coach of a championship high school basketball team in Bloomburg, afraid the truth would cost her a job.
Last December, the board of the Bloomburg Independent School District, in a 4-3 vote, began proceedings to fire Stephens for what she said was homophobia veiled as unfounded allegations of insubordination. She was put on administrative leave.
Stephens contested the charges, calling in lawyers from the Texas State Teachers Association and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and last week she agreed to a settlement with the school district on condition that she refrain from further legal action.
The district will buy out the last two years of Stephens's contract, amounting to about $100,000, one of her lawyers said.
"The school board expected me to pack up and get out of Dodge," Stephens, 39, said. "But I couldn't let them do that to me and humiliate me anymore. I couldn't let them win just because they think it's their duty to rid the world of lesbians."
The case has split the town while underscoring a growing willingness among people on both sides of the issue nationally to speak out.
Helen Carroll, the coordinator for the Homophobia in Sports Project of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said that lesbian coaches have been quietly pushed out of their jobs for decades, but that the days of coaches slinking out of town are coming to an end.
She said that lesbian coaches are increasingly empowered by role models who have stood up for themselves.
Carroll said there also was an opposing trend. "There is a firm religious group in this country that has been supported by our government that says we think it's fundamentally wrong to be gay or lesbian," she said. "That gives some people unspoken permission to try to keep gays and lesbians out of coaching, no-holds-barred."
In 1999, Stephens, who grew up in a small town in Arkansas, started coaching at the Bloomburg Independent School District, which is only one building, kindergarten through 12th grade, and last year had 264 students.
The next year, she moved from nearby Longview into Bloomburg, about 25 miles south of Texarkana, Tex.
Most townspeople work at the paper mill a few miles away, in oil fields and in the chicken-raising and logging industries.
Downtown is a three-block strip of neglected and abandoned buildings.
The biggest happening of the year is the town's Cullen Baker County Fair, a celebration commemorating the townsfolk's murder of an infamous outlaw in the 1800's. They poisoned his whiskey, shot him in the head and dragged his body through town, one resident said with pride.
Stephens learned quickly that everyone in town was interested in everyone else's business.
"They'd test me to try to figure out if I was a lesbian or not," she said. "They'd ask if I had a boyfriend or if I wanted one. I lied because I knew it would be career suicide to admit anything."
In 2000, Stephens moved in with Sheila Dunlap, the school's bus driver and a teacher's aide. Dunlap, whose family has lived in Bloomburg for more than 100 years, had two children and was in the process of divorcing her husband of 25 years.
In the meantime, Stephens was building the high school girls basketball squad into one of the best teams in school history.
Last year, it won the area, district and regional championships, coming within one game of the state tournament, and was given a parade in town. Even then, there was talk that the school board was trying to fire Stephens.
She said she was being harassed at school and written up for inconsequential things like failing to tell the superintendent and principal that she was going to her grandmother's funeral.
"It was always our policy to tell the secretary, not anyone else, that we'd be missing school, but all of a sudden they changed the rules for Merry," said Thresha Jones, a fellow teacher. "It was bogus and very obvious that the board had a specific plan to get rid of her because she was a lesbian."
Dunlap's daughter, Heather Cloninger, said Stephens had a bad temper and had cursed in front of students.
"Never has the town been so split over an issue," said Cloninger, who does not have a relationship with her mother anymore. "It's like Peyton Place here."
Some parents of Stephens's players wanted her gone. Craig Hale, who owns an oil company, said he does not want a lesbian teaching his children and possibly influencing the way they think. His daughter, Kaitlyn Cornelius, played for Stephens last season and said she felt uncomfortable around the coach, though she said Stephens never did anything inappropriate.
"I had nothing against her as a person," Hale said, but if he stood up for "one lesbian" that would mean he was "for them adopting kids, and my morals and the Bible doesn't allow that."
Three sisters on last year's team - Amy, Amber and April Medina - said that Stephens was a great coach and that they did not mind that she was a lesbian, though they never knew she was, for sure.
After the last basketball season, Stephens resigned as coach and took a full-time teaching job at the school.
While 25 girls played basketball at Bloomburg in the 2003-4 season, only seven ended up on this season's team. Many quit because Coach Stephens was gone.
Still, the debate about her continued. Stephens said that she was blamed when one of her former players, now in college, revealed she was a lesbian. That player's parents insisted that the superintendent, Jerry Hendrick, fire Stephens because she had "converted their daughter," Stephens said. Hendrick and all but one of the six school board members did not return phone messages seeking comment on the controversy.
Three days before Stephens was placed on administrative leave in December, Dunlap, 46, was also fired, and given no reason, she said, because she is not under contract. Then Stephens's case against the district began.
Michael Shirk, Stephens's lawyer from the Texas State Teachers Association, took depositions from community members, including the school board president, Derous Byers, who was opposed to the effort to fire Stephens.
Byers said in the deposition that another board member, Ronnie Peacock, told him that Stephens "doesn't deserve to work here" because she is a lesbian. In that deposition, Byers recalled Peacock saying: "We're bonded or insured for a million dollars apiece. We ought to fire her and see what happens."
In a telephone interview, Peacock, denied making that statement although he favored Stephens's dismissal. "I liked Coach Stephens personally and I thought she was a great coach and teacher, but we had reasons to fire her that I can't tell you," he said.
Since leaving their school jobs, Stephens and Dunlap, who live in a spacious log house on nine acres, have started a concession business selling fruit drinks at fairs. They are still the talk of the town, especially because the school board election is coming up, pitting candidates who were pro-Coach Stephens against those who opposed her.
"There have been many times that I wanted to quit coaching because of the scrutiny and pressure of being what people wanted me to be," said Stephens, who said she may coach again somewhere. "So in a strange way, I'm glad this all happened. I can be who I really am now."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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