When I decided to write a Wikipedia page about You Can Play, I had never even edited Wikipedia before. I spent six hours reading the guides, learning the markup language, researching sources, and writing the page, because I think the organization is important. I think that in twenty years, being able to say "I wrote the original Wikipedia article on You Can Play" will get me cred in both the sports community and the queer community.
Here's why I think that.
The first thing to understand here is that pro athletes, in general, are good at meeting clear-cut expectations. It's what they do. They are chosen, in part, for their demonstrated ability to do as they're told. But they won't jump to just anybody's beck and call; they answer to the people they recognize as authority figures. Mostly that means coaches and officials in their organization, but besides that (current CBA friction aside) they answer to the NHL.
You Can Play isn't the first organization created to combat homophobia in sports, but it's the most effective for two reasons: they have a widely respected authority figure in Brian Burke, and they have a simple, easy way for athletes to jump on board. It's one thing to ask players to commit ongoing involvement to a social activism campaign; it's another thing entirely to just ask them to commit out loud to not being assholes to potential gay teammates. That's a clear-cut expectation they can easily meet, and after the initial star-studded video was released and it became apparent that supporting YCP is good PR, there's no reason not to do it.
And the videos are accomplishing their goal. It's not the content that matters so much--they're well-done but fairly bland and similar to one another, for the most part. What matters is the fast-expanding list of players who have filmed them. According to a Sports Illustrated poll of pro athletes conducted in 2006, 80% of NHL players would support a gay teammate. But it's gotta be hard for a gay athlete to believe that when no one's talking about it outside of anonymous polls and he's hearing homophobic slurs all over the place. The more players film YCP spots, the easier it will be for the first guy to come out. That's the next step, and the YCP folks say they think it won't be too much longer.
In addition, the act of reading the script probably helps strengthen the positive attitudes of athletes who appear in the videos. The psych literature is full of evidence that behavior leads to belief; when people are asked to write a persuasive piece making a particular argument, for example, they then profess more agreement with the argument in question, even if they don't think their opinions were changed. Expressing support for YCP likely increases athletes' investment in the cause, which could make them more likely to speak up against casual homophobia in the locker room.
That's the only real way to make social change happen. Rules and official positions are a good start, but the actual culture isn't going to change unless there are guys who are part of it saying, "Hey, not cool, man," when someone drops the three-letter F-bomb. When Cam Janssen said that sucking cock would get a guy beaten up and got a ton of public backlash, I expected him to get yelled at by management, be forced to release a statement obviously written by a Devils PR person, stop being so blatant about his homophobia, and keep on being an asshole inside his own head. And that's pretty much how it went down. But he also had a talk with Patrick Burke, and Burke's description of it after the fact made me honestly believe that he might have gotten through to Janssen. That's another thing YCP is doing right: when an incident like this happened, they reached out to the offender on a "hey bro, can we talk?" level, rather than sticking to the "homophobia is damaging and it's important to be respectful"-type language of the PSAs.
And then there's Tim Thomas, who actually did the movement a huge favor by supporting Chick-Fil-A's anti-gay stance. Because I'm sure there are other NHL players who are against gay rights, but there is not a single player in the league right now who has any desire whatsoever for their personal politics to be publicly associated with Tim Thomas.
YCP is mostly focusing on hockey right now, which I think is a good call. But I think the movement is going to spread across sports in a few years, probably after an NHL player or two comes out and the mainstream media starts paying attention. American culture in general is becoming more queer-friendly, and prejudice isn't as socially acceptable as it used to be. Football players are giving soundbites to Out.com about being totally cool with potential gay teammates. If YCP keeps being smart about how they do this, eventually they're going to revolutionize sports culture. And when they do, I'll be right there updating the Wikipedia article.
