Timbers Step Forward

Major League Soccer is tiny compared to mainstream sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Last year’s championship match set an MLS TV record with 3.5 million viewers. Even the NHL doubled that mark during the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2017.

But in “Soccer City,” the Portland Timbers have an almost cultish following and influence. Their supporters club, the Timbers Army, are self-described as “setting the bar” for soccer fandom in America.

“It was just the right thing to do, at the right time.”

In October 2013, Timbers owner Merritt Paulson and COO Mike Golub decided to test the strength of that influence, and potentially put the team’s reputation on the line with their fans, when they publicly announced the team’s support (as well as the support of their sister team, the Thorns — a pro women’s soccer club also owned by Paulson) for an Oregon ballot measure to legalize same-sex marriage. The organization didn’t simply support the initiative, they explicitly called on fans to turn out and vote for the marriage equality measure. (A suit in U.S. district court found Oregon’s gay marriage ban violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, preempting the need to put the measure on the ballot.)

Weekend Caucus spoke to Mike Golub about what prompted the Timbers to take this historical action, at the risk of alienating some of the Timbers’ fan base and others in the League. He said, rather modestly, that

“It was just the right thing to do, at the right time.”

The impact, however, was anything but modest. Within a week, the Portland Trail Blazers followed suit, becoming the first NBA team to publicly support marriage equality — thanks in large part to the Timber’s own ‘trail blazing.’

In the months that followed, particularly leading up to the Supreme Court hearing on gay marriage in April 2015, several NFL and MLB teams publicly came out in support of same-sex marriage — with the notable inclusion of the reigning Super Bowl champs (the New England Patriots) and World Series champs at the time (the San Francisco Giants).

While we can’t know if the Timbers’ and subsequently other major sports franchises’ actions impacted the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage, there is reason to believe it influenced the fans.

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Athletes’ Influence

A recent research study found that sports fans are disproportionately influenced by the political positions of professional athletes, compared with regular Joes or even other types of celebrities.

The study explained that:

“When fans learn — sometimes unexpectedly — that other fans or athletes are supporters of marriage equality, they are motivated to agree” because this helps to “normalize their membership in those sports-fan groups.”

The bottom line? — Sports fans are 16% more likely to support gay marriage when they’ve been told a pro athlete supports it.

Ashland Johnson is a lawyer by training. We spoke with her about the impact of major sports teams speaking out for marriage equality. As the Director of Public Education and Research for the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest advocacy organization for LGBTQ equality, she felt strongly that an attitude shift among the general public was a critical precursor to the positive Supreme Court decision in 2015:

“It’s very rare for the Supreme Court to make a decision that is ahead of society’s hearts and minds on the issue, so when we’re trying to promote LGBTQ equality, a lot of the work we have to do is just changing people’s perspectives on the broader scale.”

Without the Portland Timbers speaking out, other professional sports teams would have been less likely to take a public stance. And when sports teams speak out — that changes people’s perspectives in a way that Johnson says is fundamental to achieving broader social and legal change.

In fact, the HRC’s experience confirms what the researchers found in their study — that pro athletes have a unique ability to impact mainstream perspectives on LGBTQ issues. Johnson told Weekend Caucus how important it has been for the HRC to involve athletes in their education and advocacy strategies: