Leafs brass face backlash for 'promoting' homosexuality
Team logo, uniform to appear in movie with gay themes
Joe O'Connor, National Post
Published: Thursday, February 15, 2007
Richard Peddie is accustomed to negative feedback. The president of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is a favourite target for disaffected Leafs fans. And whether he is out on the streets, watching a game at Air Canada Centre or simply at his desk reading e-mail, Peddie seldom escapes from the public's ire.
But in recent months, a portion of the hockey executive's electronic correspondence with the outside world has strayed from the usual themes of trading Mats Sundin, firing John Ferguson or coaxing Wendel Clark and Darryl Sittler out of retirement.
"I have not been associated with an issue like this before," Peddie said yesterday. "You see some peoples' reactions -- they are so raw and live -- and it's not completely surprising to see, but it is a little disappointing."
The hot-button social issue currently buffeting the Maple Leafs boss is homosexuality. Peddie and the Maple Leafs were mentioned in a seemingly innocuous press release in late November. The Leafs, with the blessing of the NHL, agreed to allow Canadian filmmaker Paul Brown to feature the team logo and uniform in the comedy Breakfast with Scot.
The movie, which just finished shooting, is about a gay couple: Sam, an ex-Maple Leafs player, and Ed, the team's lawyer. The initial press release described the pair as a "very straight gay couple ? whose lifestyle and relationship are turned upside down when they become guardians of Scot, a budding queen of an 11-year-old boy."
Mainstream media, gay rights activists and Toronto captains past and present (Sittler and Sundin) all spoke in favour of the project in the days following the announcement.
But not everybody was comfortable with the movie's premise.
"A lot of the feedback we are getting is from the States," Peddie said. His e-mail address appears on the Americans for Truth Web site, an Illinois-based organization dedicated to "exposing and countering the homosexual agenda."
The site describes Breakfast with Scot as a "work of homosexual propaganda ? meant to target the last vestiges of resistance to normalized homosexuality among Canadians."
Peddie's address is also found on the Canada Family Action Coalition's (CFAC) page. Headquartered in Calgary, CFAC is a not-for-profit organization that opposes gay marriage and serves to promote a "Judeo-Christian worldview of Canadian society."
CFAC co-founder and executive director Brian Rushfeldt yesterday condemned the Leafs for getting involved in "sex promotion."
Earlier this week, he told the Los Angeles Times that Breakfast with Scot was "another attempt to normalize homosexual behaviour, and [the producers] assume the Maple Leafs will help the cause."
Brown, the producer, says the film, which will be distributed through Capri Releasing, was devised as a crowd-pleaser "in the spirit of Billy Elliot or About a Boy -- movies that celebrate the uniqueness of children, and how they can teach adults."
Last week, former NBA player John Amaechi joined a short list of openly gay ex-pro athletes when he disclosed his sexual preference in advance of a book tour. Former pros Billy Beane (baseball), and Esera Tuaolo (football) have also come out, though only after their careers were over.
Not a single NHL player has ever come out as gay. Former Toronto Maple Leafs captain Rick Vaive says sexual identity was not an issue during a career that stretched from 1979 to 1992.
"Nobody really gave it any thought," Vaive says. "And I wasn't aware of anybody over the years that I played with, or played against, [being gay]. I don't know how the players would have reacted back then, but I think today it might be a little different."
Vaive believes that within that locker room, where your teammates mean everything to you and the common cause of winning is held up above all else, a gay player's fear of being ostracized is likely more potent than any desire he may have to do the right thing for the sake of sexual politics.
"There are a lot of people out there that can't get their head around [homosexuality]," Vaive says. "But you know what, it is time people realized that this is part of real life. And perhaps the Leafs felt that it is 2007, and it doesn't matter what the colour of your skin is, or what your sexual preference is, or what your religious beliefs are, we all have to get along. "So get over it."
© National Post 2007
