Kordell Stewart sits on a Steelers bench
Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback Kordell Stewart watches the clock wind down in the fourth quarter in the AFC Championship game 27 January, 2002, at Heinz Stadium in Pittsburgh, PA. The New England Patriots beat the Steelers 24-17 and will advance to the Super Bowl. | STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images
I grew up in Steelers country, where loving the team was close to a religion. My father is buried within a few feet of Art Rooney.
Years later I sat beside Dan Rooney at a dinner for NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, and the two of us talked about our fathers.
The Steelers gave me some of the greatest joys of my life, including six unforgettable Super Bowl wins.
And, so did Kordell Stewart.
The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback for eight seasons — he started four — was a marvel to watch. Throw, run and catch – anything he did near the football looked like magic. I wanted him to succeed in the worst possible way, and when he did, I was happy for him.
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In 1998, I helped spread a lie about him being gay.
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I watched Stewart’s new HBO documentary this week. The film, “Kordell Stewart: Slash & Burn,” chronicles how the pioneering Black dual-threat quarterback was forced to endure a malicious, manufactured rumor that weaponized his private life to stall his groundbreaking career.
In it, there is a scene in which Stewart walks through Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park for the first time in his life — the place where a false rumor said he had been arrested for soliciting a man. Stewart was, according to the rumor, gay.
In the film, the camera lingers on him while he sits in his car, clearly pain in his eyes.
I got choked up watching it. My heart broke.
There was no crime, no arrest, at Schenley Park. The real crime was what the rumor did to him. Like Stewart, I have never been to that park, and I have no desire to visit it now.
I was living in New York when the rumor swept through Pittsburgh, and beyond. “Did you hear Kordell Stewart is gay?”
I had no idea whether it was true. I passed it along anyway.
Spreading a story you can’t verify about a man you have never met is wrong, whatever your reasons. But the reasons explain how ordinary people become part of something cruel.
I worked for my local congressman from Southwestern Pennsylvania in the late 1980s and 1990s. I started on Capitol Hill at 23, gay and terrified of anyone finding out.
Two men on our congressional staff were suddenly gone one day. Disappeared. They later died of AIDS. No one ever explained why, and no one ever spoke about it. They were just gone. To even be suspected of being gay could be life-altering.
Back home, I stood in VFW halls and bars next to constituents who laughed with the congressman about a child he’d had out of wedlock. Their verdict, again and again, was that he could do anything he wanted, so long as he wasn’t gay.
I smiled and nodded, and it was a gut punch every time. Whether he was joking or not, the congressman once told me, “You should run for my seat someday.” How could I, when I wouldn’t be welcome in those halls and bars if the truth ever came out?
When a rumor said that my favorite quarterback, on my favorite team, might be gay, I desperately grabbed on to it. If he was gay, then maybe I could be accepted.
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I wanted validation so badly that I took it from a man who never asked to give it.
The rumor was false. But I wished, in the worst possible way, that it were true.
As LZ Granderson, a gay sports writer, notes in the documentary, the rumor may have gained steam because of George Michael’s arrest in a Los Angeles public restroom around the same time.
That era was soaked in racism too, and Western Pennsylvania wasn’t exempt. I first understood how deep it ran when Joe Gilliam was the Steelers’ Black quarterback, and I heard the N-word for the first time.
And yes, I heard it again when Stewart became the starting quarterback.
A Black quarterback in a blue-collar town was tolerated if he won.
A Black quarterback with a rumor about his sexuality was something else entirely, and people who hated one thing had a reason to say the other out loud.
Nothing about being gay is shameful. The shame belongs to what I did with my fear, and to the culture that made me so afraid.
What bothers me most is the unfairness.
I went on to a successful career and a good, happy life. The documentary showed me that Stewart still carries that rumor, on his face behind tinted glasses, decades later, walking through a cold, frozen park that was once his hell.
To Kordell Stewart, I am incredibly sorry. Not for being gay, but for being part of the whole sordid story. You deserved better from a fan who loved watching you play.
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