Seven Sayreville, N.J., High School Football Players Charged in Sexual Assault of Teammates

 

If the numbers mentioned in the report from Christian Science Monitor are accurate, 1 in 4 boys experiences sexual violence from peers during the high school years. This is identical to the number of females experiencing sexual violence in high school or college. Clearly, rape is not about sex - it's about power, control, and humiliation.

This crap needs to stop.

Hazing cancels Sayreville, N.J., football season: Does culture contribute to abuse?

As more details of the nature of the alleged sexual abuse in the New Jersey football program become known, a debate widens about the damage that can come from behavior often dismissed as 'initiation.'

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, Staff writer | October 10, 2014

In a football town, Sayreville residents shaken by hazing scandal; WPIX - New York

Amid a criminal investigation into possible hazing and sexual violence among high school football players, the town of Sayreville, N.J., is facing a season with no more football.

The decision by Sayreville Superintendent of Schools Richard Labbe to cancel the season Monday night brought an uproar from some parents, worried that innocent students who may depend on football for college scholarships would be unfairly punished.

[Update: On Friday night, seven students were charged with sex crimes in connection with a series of assaults. Six of the seven students, ranging in age from 15 to 17, were arrested Friday night, and the seventh was being sought, police and prosecutors said.]

But as details of the allegations at War Memorial High School spread in the news media this week, the town has become the stage for a broader public conversation about the detrimental nature of behaviors that experts say are too often dismissed as “tradition” or “initiation.”

About 47 percent of high school students experience some form of hazing, but only 8 percent apply that label to it, a landmark national study found in 2008. Among high school boys, 26 percent experience sexual violence from their male peers, the Journal of Youth and Adolescence reported in 2009.

A parent of one of the players in Sayreville told NJ Advance Media Wednesday that this fall, freshmen players were repeatedly attacked in the locker room by upperclassmen, who would physically restrain their target and assault him anally.

The school district has directed questions to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s office, and a spokesman there told the Monitor he cannot comment beyond confirming there is an “active investigation.”

The initial negative reaction by many in the town when the season was cancelled may stem from confusion over the language in New Jersey’s statutes such as intimidation, harassment, and bullying, says Parry Aftab, an attorney and anti-bullying expert based in Fort Lee, N.J. Some people may not have realized how serious the allegations were.

But some who hear the allegations in such cases are still inclined to excuse the behavior and, instead, blame the victims for coming forward, says Kiersten Stewart, director of public policy and advocacy in the Washington office of Futures Without Violence. “This in no way can be tolerated. This is not hazing, this is child sexual abuse and we need to call it what it is,” she says.

The case highlights that education about respect, decency, and standing up against violence needs to start at a young age, Ms. Stewart and others say. But there also needs to be tough scrutiny of what any adults may have known about the case – whether current or former coaches, parents, or former players.

Superintendent Labbe told football players’ parents that school officials were not aware of any bullying or hazing before players came forward late last week, NJ Advance Media reports.

It’s important that students have access to anonymous reporting methods for more of them to come forward about bullying, hazing, and sexual assault, Ms. Aftab says.

The society “can’t just look at it as some anomalous thing that happens in some aberrant group,” but instead “we have to look at aspects of our culture that can create a climate where something like this is able to occur,” says Elizabeth Allan, president of Stop Hazing and a professor at the University of Maine in Orono.

One such factor is “the social construction of masculinity,” Professor Allan says, in which there are “lots of rewards for being seen as strong, tough, heterosexual…. One way to reinforce power and status and hierarchy in a group is to engage [male peers] in behaviors that would call into question their masculinity.”

In this case, if the allegations are true, she says, it will be more obvious to people that the behavior was physically forced, but in many instances of hazing, people think victims are going along with it because they don’t understand the coercion at play. “The kids know that if they don’t [go along with hazing] they are likely going to be seen in a different light.”

Education about how to speak up or intervene as a bystander in such situations is spreading into more high schools and middle schools around the country.

Sayreville community members are organizing a Sunday evening vigil to show support for the victims of the alleged hazing and raise awareness.

Rightbloggers - Rice, Peterson NFL Scandals Really About Liberals' Plan to Pussify America

What do we expect from the knuckle draggers in the rightwing blogosphere when confronted with men hurting women? Yeah, that's right, more knuckle dragging hypermasculinity.

Roy Edroso at The Village Voice did a round up of the nonsense spewing from the right.

Rice, Peterson NFL Scandals Really About Liberals' Plan to Pussify America, Say Rightbloggers

By Roy Edroso
Sun., Sept. 21 2014


[Roy Edroso dissects the right-wing blogosphere in this weekly feature]
The NFL hasn't been having a great time of it lately, PR-wise (though its TV viewership numbers seem not to have suffered): Now even non-fans know that Baltimore Raven Ray Rice was seen cold-cocking his fiancee and Minnesota Viking Adrian Peterson allegedly beat his kid hard enough with a switch to raise welts.

As often happens when celebrities get negative publicity, we have heard opinions from several parties not intimate with these cases. Rightbloggers used the controversies to promote their pet cultural theories: For example, that it's really liberals, not football players, who beat up women, and that the NFL, which is liberal like all corporations, is being Rice-baited into paying off feminists and sissies who, like liberal sportswriters, just want to ruin America's Game for conservatives.

The most prominent conservative commentary on these cases has come from Rush Limbaugh, who you may remember attacked the NFL as liberal-biased when they wouldn't let him buy a share of the St. Louis Rams in 2009. Limbaugh has so much yak on the subject (e.g., "The NFL Collides With the PC Media Culture") that we could fill this column with it, but let's not: The lesser rightbloggers are much more fun.

Many of the brethren were outraged that popular sportswriters did not immediately ask what the big deal was, but actually acted appalled. What ever happened to the shirtsleeved drunks of yore who would have shitcanned these stories but pronto?

When CBS sportscaster James Brown blamed childhood taunts like "You throw the ball like a girl" or "You're a little sissy" for the hypermasculinity that sometimes leads to domestic violence, Ben Shapiro of FrontPageMag claimed this was ridiculous, and what would really stop such violence was two-parents-but-not-gay families.


The liberal media is using guerrilla tactics to spread negative ideas about violent jocks. (Huffington Post.)
"No man has ever hit a woman because she 'throws like a girl,' " point-missed Shapiro. "But plenty of young men have hit women because they had no moral compass and did not believe in basic concepts of virtue -- and plenty of young men lack such a moral compass and belief in virtue thanks to lack of male role models." So Shapiro pleaded fatherhood, a cause he affected to believe is "unpopular."

As for sissy-shaming, Shapiro found concern over that as absurd as concern over the Washington Redskins' team name -- or, as he was careful to put it, "that the name of the Washington Redskins matters far more to Native-Americans than the nearly half of Native-American youths who drop out of high school," perhaps hoping this would defuse the issue the way "what about black-on-black crime?" defused the Michael Brown shooting, at least among a certain demographic.

Well, at least Brown didn't get the treatment Michael Signorile got from NewsBusters, which headlined, "Breaking: Gay Liberal Radio Host Doesn't Like NFL." (Swish, and we don't mean basketball!)

At National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy criticized "tendentious 'sports journalists,' the majority of whom are decidedly left of center, [who] are much less guarded about their hostility to conservatives than their fellow progressives on the political beat." He gave exactly one example of this: ESPN allowed its own correspondent, Kate Fagan, to speak on the issue. (Fagan also writes for espnW, which McCarthy told us is "where the network focuses on women in sports and, seamlessly, on political and social matters that the Left has successfully branded 'women's issues.' ")

Fagan, as the taped interview shows, said that the issue was bigger than Ray Rice, and that she wanted the NFL to "throw the kitchen sink at domestic violence," which meant, in her opinion, going into schools and "talking to young men about dealing with anger about how they treat women: I think that's where you're going to see change...going into the school systems and the younger spaces and really reprogramming how we raise men."

This McCarthy took to mean that "boys would be instructed that differentiating men from women breeds domestic violence," and that was "how radical ideas -- like the Left's war on boys -- get mainstreamed." He proposed instead that we focus on "the breakdown of the family, the scorn heaped on chivalry, the disappearance of manners, and the general coarsening of our society that result from relentless progressive attacks on traditional values and institutions." If only boys opened doors for girls again, there'd be no need for this reprogramming! (Other key phrases in McCarthy's column: "the Obama Left's agenda," "ACORN," "Al Sharpton's National Action Network," and "Alinsky-style community organizing.")

Fagan wasn't the only woman rightbloggers were mad at. When NOW President Terry O'Neill complained about the Rice incident, Larry Elder roared, "What about NOW's indifference toward, if not acceptance of, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's sordid record of disgusting behavior toward women?" Also, what about Bill Clinton, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Wiley, Paula Jones, and Gennifer Flowers? How come their video footage didn't make NOW mad? (For more of the same, see radio shouter Mark Levin.)

Disdaining Brown's "wild attempt to connect the Ray Rice incident to a sexist culture in the NFL," George Neumayr of the American Spectator said oh yeah what about Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who had recently spoken without incident at Yale University? "When someone like Hirsi Ali makes a far more serious case for violence against women grounded in Islamic tradition, the Left throws a fit," said Neumayr. Why, those Muslims are almost as bad as Ted Kennedy.

"If women are the same as men, then how can they argue that a woman beaten by her boyfriend deserves special protection?" oh-shit-not-this-again'd Gina Loudon at WorldNetDaily. Loudon then argued that feminist doctrine -- specifically that "there is no difference between men and women," which we believe comes from Our Bodies, Ourselves -- meant that "you can't say that male abusers are more at fault than female abusers." But "despite old feminists' fantasies," she added, "women and men are not the same. American women are waking up to that fact, and as the co-author of a new book, 'What Women Really Want,' " etc., link to purchase provided.

At the New American, Selwyn Duke said oh yeah, what about Bill Clinton, Bob Filner, and Bob Packwood? Then, having run out of prominent Democrats to talk about, Duke posited that "it is liberal men -- feminist-oriented men -- who are most likely to abuse women." See, churchgoing people tend to be Republicans, and in one study churchgoers self-reported less domestic abuse than non-churchgoers. Libs hate God, so case closed!

If you need more, Duke said, "just consider feminist dogma. Liberals assert that men will treat women better if we scrap antiquated ideas such as chivalry, thought to be condescending, and passionately embrace notions of equality, which, liberals insist, means teaching boys to treat the sexes the same. Let's translate this: so we're telling little boys to treat girls the way they would other boys. And how might that be?" Translation: Equality means you get to smack a bitch up.

"This should a true 'duh' moment," added Duke. Indeed.

Some of the brethren saw in critics of off-the-field NFL violence evidence of what might be called Rice-baiting -- that is, Rice-pimping the unfortunate incidents to generate cash for their Rice-related causes.

"THE LEFT PREPARES TO CASH IN ON RAY RICE," cried Paul Mirengoff at Power Line.

"Whenever an institution becomes as massive as the NFL, the ideologically driven will attempt to enlist the institution for their own purposes," Mirengoff went on. Along with the more obvious ideologues, "some corporate sponsors -- Marriott Hotels, FedEx, PepsiCo and maybe others -- have also gotten into the act," not because they are, as recent history shows, PR-obsessed weasels, but because they "want to stay on the good side of liberal pressure groups like NOW....Corporate America is prone to roll over (up to a point) for liberal pressure groups. They do so in part because corporate America is, itself, liberal..." That explains all those diversity programs -- and now they're going to teach married people not to beat each other up! What is this, Russia?

At End of the American Dream, Michael Snyder went further: "the NFL has become a circus of political correctness," he claimed. For example, "the NFL recently banned advertisements from 'Slap Ya Mama Cajun Products.' " Why would they do that during a domestic violence controversy? Must be political! Worse, Snyder reported, NFL players wear pink accoutrements during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Soon they'll be wearing bras and panties, like Billy Martin predicted!

The Rice issue had not cooled when the world discovered the welts on Peterson's son, and suddenly we were hearing about the pros and cons of corporal punishment from amateur child-rearing experts across the country, including Sean Hannity, who said his old man beat him pretty good and he came out all right, which self-activating joke we're sure you've already gotten.

The brethren seemed a little tired by the time the Peterson case came up, but some put in solid effort to extract conservative points from it, with predictable results.


Aw, so cute, with little stars like when Nancy and Sluggo got beaten till they bled! (The Cagle Post.)
"NFL Star Adrian Peterson Is Facing Serious Jail Time For Something Our Parents Did Every Day," headlined Western Journalism (over photographs of the welts on the kid's legs).

Douglas V. Gibbs talked at the Canada Free Press about how he got beat with a switch as a kid, and though he retroactively approved of that, his wife wouldn't let him spank their own kids. Gibbs said the kids came out OK, though "I do believe their transition into adulthood would have been smoother had they been disciplined in a stronger manner as they were growing up." (We wonder what his wife thinks of this, assuming she's still around.)

However, Gibbs went on, "some people believe that any physical discipline, especially if an instrument is used, is abusive, and they have decided to force their view upon parents that do not agree with them...'If only,' they must've been thinking, 'if only we had a poster child, a high profile person to fry for his abusive disciplinary techniques, so that we can drive home the idea that whoopin's are child abuse.'"

And then the Devil delivered unto them Adrian Peterson! "Remember, people like Hillary Clinton says [sic] that parents can't be trusted with the raising of their children, and that it 'takes a village to raise a child,' " claimed Gibbs. "They are foaming at the mouth with the good fortune of the Peterson story falling in their laps...They did it with Sandy Hook when it came to Gun Control, and they are doing it with Adrian Peterson..." Try and keep this stuff quiet, guys -- admittedly, that's tough to do with mass murder, but there are ways to hit kids that don't leave marks.

At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw said the "dog pile on the NFL in general and Commissioner Roger Goodell in particular" was "not dissimilar to the general gang mentality which has so many broadcasters ready to pile on the police in every nook and cranny of the country in the wake of the Ferguson case."

Jack Cashill at American Thinker also had a Ferguson angle: "For all its controlled violence, football provides young men, many of them from troubled homes, with all the discipline they will ever know," he wrote. "Had Ferguson's Michael Brown -- all 6'4", 295 pounds of him -- grown up in a halfway functional household he would likely be alive and playing offensive tackle for some college today." Probably would have gotten out of some traffic tickets as well, unless liberals have ruined that for us, too!

"This is all so wildly disproportionate," sputtered National Review's Rich Lowry -- he was talking about the negative reactions, we should make clear, not the writings of his fellow rightbloggers -- "that perhaps something more than the usual ax-grinding, ratings chase, and group think is at work. It may be that these cases are ways to express a deeper discomfort with the NFL, which sacrifices men's bodies and minds for our viewing pleasure every week." And who might be expressing that discomfort? Maybe sissies -- if we're still allowed to use that noble word!

"The problem with this particular cultural conversation," said Lowry's colleague Nancy French, is "it's hard to conduct it rationally while looking at the photos of a little boy's legs. Peterson said he went overboard in his spanking that day. He didn't do it right." (Pro tip: Next time, try the rubber hose.) "Yet the Left demands that the Peterson case simply be the end of the question, the end of the spanking era."

French supported this last assertion with a quote from an anti-spanking advocate whose authority to speak for the Left must have been voted when we were out of the room. ("The Left, of course, knows the art of spinning a tale," she added; you have to admire her chutzpah.) But in rightblogger-world, nothing's either good or bad, but its propaganda potential makes it so.

Let us close with Eric Golub of Communities Digital News, one of the rare defenders of NFL commissioner Goodell, whose job is jeopardized by these scandals. "Goodell is not being attacked for anything he has done or failed to do," said Golub. "He is being attacked for his mere being."

What Golub meant was that Goodell's father was a Republican senator, and "Goodell is married to Jane Skinner, who used to be a widely respected on-air personality at Fox News. That sounds like a pretty Republican household." By contrast, sportswriters are a bunch of commies ("NBC's Bob Costas has also aggressively pushed gun control").

Golub's nut graf (in one sense, anyway) was this:

"The NFL makes plenty of money, just like Walmart and those oil companies liberals hate so much. The NFL is violent, which bothers the leftist peaceniks as much as they are bothered by gun manufacturers. It is male-dominated, which offends the radical feminists. It is pro-military and overtly pro-American, which the left derides as jingoistic. Commissioner Goodell is tall, handsome, white, male and married to a beautiful blonde wife. He also has perfect hair. He is everything the liberal media loathes."

We tend to think of conspiracy theorists as nuts raving about chemtrails, but really -- when you're that deeply immersed in partisan politics, anything that happens can be part of one.

So what are those three scariest words? "Be a man."

This wisdom comes from Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL defensive lineman and now a pastor. He was interviewed recently for NPR's Utah Public Radio, and the transcript is below. This story is part of All Things Considered's "Men in America" series.

Interesting quote:

CORNISH: For you, what is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man?

EHRMANN: I think it could be only defined by two things. One, it's your capacity to love and to be loved. Masculinity ought to be defined in terms of relationships. Second thing, it ought to be defined by commitment to a cause - that all of us have a responsibility to give back - to make the world more fair, more just, more hospitable for every human being. So I think it's about relationships and commitment to a cause. That's the underlying of all humanity - men and women.

Cool interview.

The 3 Scariest Words A Boy Can Hear

By NPR Staff
Originally published on Mon July 14, 2014 

Listen  - 7:25

Joe Ehrmann, shown in 1975, was a defensive lineman with the Baltimore Colts for much of the '70s. He says that as a child, he was taught that being a man meant dominating people and circumstances — a lesson that served him well on the football field, but less so in real life.   Neil Leifer Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

This story is part of All Things Considered's "Men in America" series.

It's rare that a man makes it through life without being told, at least once, "Be a man." To Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL defensive lineman and now a pastor, those are the three scariest words that a boy can hear.

Ehrmann — who played with the Baltimore Colts for much of the 1970s and was a lineman at Syracuse University before that — confronted many models of masculinity in his life. But, as with many boys, his first instructor on manhood was his father, who was an amateur boxer.

Ehrmann says of his father: "I think his definition, which was very old in this country, was: Men don't need. Men don't want. Men don't touch. Men don't feel. If you're going to be a man in this world, you better learn how to dominate and control people and circumstances."

On the football field, those lessons served Ehrmann well. But, as he tells NPR's Audie Cornish, it was not the same case in the pediatric oncology ward. In 1978, Ehrmann's teenage brother was diagnosed with cancer. However tough Joe was on the field, he did not feel equipped to help his brother or himself.

Interview Highlights

On how his brother's death affected him

When he died, that was devastating to me. And I started to ask all the questions about what is the role, the meaning, the purpose of life. I was 29 years old, I was six years into my NFL career, and I had no concept — no concept what life was about, and no concept what I was about. And on this journey, I ended up asking the question: What does it mean to be a man? ...

I recognized that everything I had invested my life in — all my accomplishments, my achievements, the stuff I had accumulated — I recognized at that moment they offered no hope or help to my 19-year-old brother — 18-year-old brother — lying on his deathbed. ...

All I had was these old "man up" kind of things — "suck it up, we'll get through this together" — when he really needed the emotional, the nurturing, the love. And I had to really struggle to pull that out of my heart.

On the roles a coach can play in his players' lives

There's two kinds of coaches in America: You're either transactional or you're transformational. Transactional coaches basically use young people for their own identity, their own validation, their own ends. It's always about them — the team first, players' needs down the road.

And then you have transformational coaches. They understand the power, the platform, the position they have in the lives of young people, and they're going to use that to change the arc of every young person's life. I think football is an ideal place — sports in general — team sports are an ideal place to help boys become men. And the great myth in America today is that sports builds character. That's not true in a win-at-all-costs culture. Sports doesn't build character unless the coach models it, nurtures it and teaches it.

On what those philosophies look like on the field

I think there's a lot of screamers, there's a lot of shouters, there's a lot of shamers. My approach is this: Boy, you're in the middle of the game, and some kid's having a tough time. They get beat. ... I tell all my players, "Come on over to me during the game and I'll give you a hug." And you think about the power of a hug versus swearing, shouting, shaming at some kid.

When I played football, I hated [when] some kid would get a knee injury, your teammate would go down and that coach would say move the practice down 20 yards and leave that kid laying there. ... As coaches, we can kneel down next to that kid, you affirm the tears, the pain, the emotions, and you bring all the team around to say, "How can we help Bobby? He's one of us; he's done so much. He had so many dreams." So, you teach them how to build authentic community as men caring for and loving each other.

On the changes he's seen in ideas of masculinity

I think those three lies of masculinity — athletic ability, sexual conquest, economic success — in many ways, those things have been heightened. You have this increase in social media. You have young boys coming into this world, and they are hit 24/7. They're given all kinds of negative messages about their masculinity. They've been conditioned, and they have way more messaging out of this culture than I ever had as a young boy. I think in many respects, it's more difficult. There's more negative messaging out there and less positive.

On what it means to be a man

It think it can only be defined by two things: One, it's your capacity to love and to be loved. Masculinity ought to be defined in terms of relationships. Second thing, it ought to be defined by commitment to a cause. All of us have a responsibility to give back, to make the world more fair, more just, more hospitable for every human being. So I think it's about relationships and commitments to a cause. That's the underline of all humanity — men and women.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. We've been hearing about men this summer - how their roles have changed, what their lives are like. And one thing most men are told at some point in their early lives is this - be a man.

JOE EHRMANN: Yeah, I think every boy at a very early age is given this mandate to be a man. They're actually the three scariest words every boy receives.

CORNISH: That's former NFL defenseman Joe Ehrmann. He played in the 1970s, mostly for the Baltimore Colts. As with many boys, his first instructor on manhood was his father.

EHRMANN: I think in many ways my father gave me all the wrong concepts about being a man. I think his definition, which was very old-school in this country, was men don't need. Men don't want. Men don't touch. Men don't feel. If you're going to be a man in this world, you better learn how to dominate and control people and circumstances.

CORNISH: And, of course, men don't cry. On the football field, those lessons served Joe Ehrmann well, but not in the pediatric oncology ward. In 1978 Ehrmann's teenage brother was diagnosed with cancer, and however tough Joe Ehrmann was on the field, he did not feel equipped to help his dying brother or himself.

EHRMANN: When he died, that was devastating to me. And I started to ask all the questions about what is the role, the meaning, the purpose of life. I was 29 years old. I was six years in my NFL career, and I had no concept - no concept what life was about and no concept what I was about. And on this journey I ended up asking the question what does it mean to be a man?

CORNISH: Why that question for this particular really very emotionally wrenching part of life?

EHRMANN: Well, 'cause I think I recognized that when my brother was diagnosed and began his dying process - I recognized that everything I had invested my life in - all my accomplishments, my achievements, stuff I had accumulated - I recognized at that moment they offered no hope or help to my 19-year-old brother - 18-year-old brother lying on his deathbed. I was a socialized male that had separated my heart from my head, trying to live life from the neck up.

CORNISH: You were saying all you had were the locker room speeches basically.

EHRMANN: Yeah. All I had was these old man up kind of things. Suck it up. We'll get through this thing together. When he really needed the emotional - the nurturing, the love. Boy, and I had to really struggle to pull that of my heart.

CORNISH: You went on to seminary and to become a pastor. And you also went on to coach high school football. Now, can you talk about what it is in particular you think coaches can do to shift this ideology and whether you really have encountered coaches who are interested in doing that?

EHRMANN: Well, there's two kinds of coaches in America. You're either transactional or you're transformational. Transactional coaches basically use young people for their own identity, their own validation, their own ends. It's always about them - the team first, players' needs down the road. And then you have transformational coaches. They understand the power, the platform, the position they have in the lives of young people, and they're going to use that to change the arc of every young person's life. I think football is an ideal place - sports in general - team sports are an ideal place to help boys become men. And the great myth in America today is that sports builds character. That's not true in a win-at-all-costs culture. Sports doesn't build character unless a coach models it, nurtures it and teaches it.

CORNISH: You mentioned that coaches are either transactional - what can you do for me - or transformational. On the field, how does that play out? Are you basically talking about the screamers here?

EHRMANN: The screamers, yeah. I think there's a lot of screamers. There's a lot of shouters. There's a lot of shamers. My approach is this - boy, you're in the middle of the game and some kid's having a tough time. They get beat. I tell all my players, come on over to me during the game and I'll give you a hug. And you think about the power of a hug versus swearing, shouting, shaming at some kid. Boy, you know, when I played ball I hated - some kid would get a knee injury. Your teammate would go down and that coach would say move the practice down 20 yards and leave that kid laying there. Boy, as coaches, we get kneeled down next to the kid. You affirm the tears, the pain, the emotions, and then you bring all the team around to say how can we help Bobby? He's one of us. He's done so much. He had so many dreams. So you teach them how to build authentic community as men caring and loving for each other.

CORNISH: I'm speaking with Joe Ehrmann. He's founder of Coach for America. And so you've actually been doing this work for decades. And has the average boy changed in some way or are there changes you've seen in how they approach masculinity than when you were growing up?

EHRMANN: Not too much. Boy, I think there's different nuances and stuff, but we have a real crisis when it comes to what it means to be a man.

CORNISH: Not too much, really?

EHRMANN: I don't think so. I think those three lies of masculinity - athletic ability, sexual conquest, economic success. In many ways those things have been heightened. You have this increase in social media. You have young boys coming into this world and they are - 24/7 they're given all kinds of negative messages about their masculinity. They've been conditioned, and they have way more messaging out of this culture than I ever had as a young boy. So I think in many respects it's more difficult. There's more negative messaging out there and less positive.

CORNISH: Can you talk about a particular incident that really drives that home for you?

EHRMANN: Well, I think the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case - two high school boys - 16-year-old girl - drunk, passed out - hundreds of pictures taken - tweets. And that one person had the moral clarity or moral courage to intervene in the midst of that. Two boys sentenced to prison - had no idea about consent. They weren't taught this stuff. A community tried to cover it up. Boy, I think that thing is played out and could play out at any high school. Boys have to be taught about - they have to have the moral clarity and the moral courage to speak up. That's not going to end. Women can't end it. It's not going to end until we raise up a generation of men that have the courage to call out other men on behalf of women in this country.

CORNISH: For you, what is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man?

EHRMANN: I think it could be only defined by two things. One, it's your capacity to love and to be loved. Masculinity ought to be defined in terms of relationships. Second thing, it ought to be defined by commitment to a cause - that all of us have a responsibility to give back - to make the world more fair, more just, more hospitable for every human being. So I think it's about relationships and commitment to a cause. That's the underlying of all humanity - men and women.

CORNISH: Joe Ehrmann - he's founder of Coach for America. Thank you so much for speaking with us. EHRMANN: Great to be with you, Audie. Thank you.

Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Michael Sam was given the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2014 ESPYs on Wednesday night. His acceptance speech was incredibly powerful. Enjoy!

Michael Sam's Powerful, Show-Stopping Speech at the ESPYs

By Scott Gleeson

LOS ANGELES — Michael Sam delivered an incredibly powerful speech after accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2014 ESPYs on Wednesday night.

There weren’t many dry eyes in the room following the words of Sam, who was honored for his decision to publicly come out and become the first openly gay player drafted into the NFL.

Sam emotionally quoted Ashe’s words of wisdom, that included: Start Where You Are, Use What You Have and Do What You Can.

“Those were words to live by,” Sam said. “Whether you’re white or black. Young or old. Straight or gay.”

Sam fought back tears on stage, and he ended his speech by telling the story of a gay woman who told him she never again consider committing suicide after he came out as gay.

Sam’s powerful message: “To anyone out there, especially young people feeling like you don’t fit in, or are not accepted, great things can happen when you have the courage to be yourself.”

Sam brought boyfriend Vito Cammisano on the red carpet and specifically thanked him.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson presented the award. Jason Collins, the first openly gay athlete in the NBA, was shown cheering in the audience.

John Romano - How Steroids Became the Scourge of America

This might seem like a sports topic, or even a performance enhancement topic, but it feels to me like a male topic. At the bottom line, what we are discussing here is the demonization of the male hormone, testosterone. Yes, some women do use steroids, but generally not testosterone (women tend to favor more anabolic and less androgenic substances, for obvious reasons).

On the surface, legislators talk about cheaters, which is deceptive. They held congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, where a handful of athletes were using the drugs, but they have never held hearings on professional wrestling or bodybuilding, where ALL of the athletes are using steroids (as well as growth hormone, insulin, clenbuterol, corticosteroids, and other PEDs). More to the point, there are a lot of ways of cheating, hell, pitchers do it all of the time (the Yankees have been caught twice this year "doctoring" the ball on the mound, but you won't see congress holding hearings on spit balls, or pine tar on bats).

In addition to being a male issue, this is also a transhumanist issue. Steroids are ostensibly little more than a chemical means to expand physical capabilities. Used wisely, and with a doctor's supervision, they can make us bigger and stronger with few side effects. One wonders why the government opposes this technology, other than that steroids have been demonized as a result of their abuses, not because anything is inherently wrong or dangerous about them.

Sadly, I can't really see this changing anytime soon, unless all drugs are decriminalized.

Steroids: The Birth of a Demon

How Steroids Became the Scourge of America

by John Romano
Jun 9, 2014

Here's what you need to know...

•  Due to harsh laws based on Reefer Madness-like myths, the personal use of steroids for aesthetic purposes can land lifters in prison or get them fined for more money than they probably have. Ironically, steroid usage in sports, which these laws were created to curb, has not decreased.

•  Steroids and other PEDs have been in widespread use in bodybuilding and Olympic lifting since the late 50s. Their usage in baseball, the Ben Johnson debacle, Lyle Alzado's questionable death, the Lance Armstrong farce, and the sad case of Taylor Hooton brought steroids to the forefront. Politicians and those with agendas took full advantage.

•  Although it has many medical uses and is now commonly prescribed to aging males, the illegal use of testosterone puts you into the same criminal category as a heroin addict. And science has never backed up the hysterical claims made by anti-steroid zealots.

"I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail." - Milton Friedman

The following account is something I lived through and was a small part of. It is my view of the fascinating history of how steroids emerged as an ergogenic aid in sports and subsequently became an ominous facet of the modern age - becoming criminal while at the same time assaulting the very core of America by representing a proposed danger to our youth and, worse still, sullying the most hollowed of all things American - baseball.

This odd journey, especially the inception, involved numerous colorful characters from all over the globe who together eventually created a culture. Many of you reading this have adopted this culture without perhaps knowing the full extent of what it means to be a steroid-using bodybuilder and how it got that way.

I find it unfortunate that the younger guys embracing our culture today have to adapt to a whole different set of circumstances regarding steroids than my contemporaries did. Today you have to understand that the general public - the people you deal with, work with, live next to - believes that "steroids" cause a plague of maladies, from liver, brain and kidney cancer, to heart attacks and strokes, to psychotic episodes that end in madness, mayhem, murder and death. Given the current state of the public discourse, if your next door neighbor found out you were a juicehead, he'd probably wish you were a heroin addict instead.

Back when I adopted our culture it was perfectly acceptable to drive down to Mexico and buy all the real pharmaceutical gear I wanted, at incredibly low prices, and drive it back to LA with no problema. And no one cared if a bunch of guys down at the gym took steroids. We didn't bother anyone. We were totally under the radar and really not doing anything that wrong, certainly nothing even remotely felonious.

Well, it's not like that today. Not only are steroids listed by the feds in the same class as narcotics - with prison time for possessing, importing or selling them - the media has also driven the "Reefer Madness" hysteria to such a degree that there are families in Kansas who believe Gold's Gym is the incubator for the Zombie Apocalypse. What hatched such two-headed insanity? I'm going to skim over the last 30 years and describe what I believe are the milestones that lead to the concomitant criminalization and vilification of the very sex hormones our bodies produce.

The Perfect Steroidal Storm

The demonization of steroids in America has been perpetuated by three equally reprehensible yet powerful groups: vocal alarmists with agendas who incite hysteria based on fiction, the media who reports it, and the vote-hungry law-makers in Washington who believe they can do something about it.

In the 80-90 years that steroids have been around, they've gone from virtually innocuous, unknown medical compounds to a public menace nearly eclipsing heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and club drugs, with federal penalties for distribution and possession that can put you away for a fairly extended part of your life. How did the media wrap itself around this issue and funnel politicians, athletes and bereaved parents into promoting one of the biggest scams in US pop culture?

I've been around the block a few times, seen a bit of the world with all of the bark off, but I can't for the life of me think of another situation in which a single topic has gotten so misconstrued as that of performance enhancing drugs. With the mega amount of intellect in the demonization camp regarding PEDs, any person of reason would have to ponder... why? Unfortunately, when it comes to this group of drugs, most, if not all, common intellect goes right out of the window.

It was about that very same time 24 years ago that noted economist Milton Friedman uttered the words quoted above, and President George H. W. Bush signed house bill HR 4658 IH "Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990" into law, adding anabolic steroids to Schedule III of the DEA's list of controlled substances: the same legal class as amphetamines, methamphetamines, opiates, and morphine. Subsequently, in 2004, the law was amended to add prohormones and other "steroid like" compounds to the category, thus criminalizing anything that even remotely resembles testosterone or its effect. Later, the US Sentencing Commission reconvened to raise steroid penalties.

Today, in America, it is possible to be sentenced to 30 years in prison, and fined up to $5,000,000 for the possession and distribution (or importation) of testosterone, the very same hormone that human males and, to a lesser degree, human females, have been carrying around in our bodies since the early dawn of man. Let that sink in for a minute. Did I just say thirty years and 5 million bucks for testosterone? Yes, I did. We're talking about America here, not North Korea, right? How could such an insane thing happen? Well, let's work backwards.

Muscles, Narcotics, and Prison Time 

First let me give you the sentencing guidelines as they stand today to give you the full magnitude of just how far we've come since the dawn of testosterone in the lab - the very same hormone that half of the American male voting public used to produce when they had testicles.

In the wake of the BALCO case, high ranking government agents were incensed over the four month slap on the wrist Victor Conte received after the government spent four years and over 50 million dollars chasing and prosecuting him. On March 27th, 2006, the US Sentencing Commission amended the sentencing guidelines for anabolic steroid cases by changing the way steroid quantities are factored to effectively increase sentences. The Commission's amendment made injectable and oral steroids comparable to other Schedule III drugs in a 1:1 ratio. That means that now, instead of the 50 pills that used to equal one unit, one "unit" of oral steroids is now one pill. One "unit" of injectable steroids goes from a 10 cc bottle down to half a cc.

Naturally, the government's 1:1 ratio is wrought with stupidity, not the least of which being the absence of any language pertaining to the potency of a particular drug. In the eyes of the law, a steroid is a steroid. That means a 5 mg Anavar tab is as equally felonious as a 50 mg tab of Anadrol, or 1 cc of equipoise being equal to a Sustanon 250 preload.

The guideline change also pays no attention to the diametric differences between steroids and other Schedule III drugs. All Schedule III drugs are narcotics that elicit an immediate, mind-altering effect when used for recreation, while steroids actually elicit a beneficial physical effect and no mind-altering effect. Unfortunately, no cogent argument can usurp the law of the land, which under title 21 U.S.C. states that possession of just one tablet of any steroid is now a federal crime punishable by up to one year in jail for a first offense, and up to two years in prison for anyone with a prior drug conviction.

And, if you think that's bad, you really don't want to get caught "distributing" steroids. The following increases apply to possession with intent to distribute, importation and internet sales.

[For convictions of a] "controlled substance in Schedule III, such person shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 10 years and if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 15 years, a fine not to exceed the greater of that authorized in accordance with the provisions of title 18, United States Code, or $500,000 if the defendant is an individual or $2,500,000 if the defendant is other than an individual, or both."

"If any person commits such a violation after a prior conviction for a felony drug offense has become final, such person shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 20 years and if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 30 years, a fine not to exceed the greater of twice that authorized in accordance with the provisions of title 18, United States Code, or $1,000,000 if the defendant is an individual or $5,000,000 if the defendant is other than an individual, or both."

What could this mean to you? Let's imagine you have a buddy down at the gym who picked up a few bottles of test for you and a few of his other buddies while he was down in Mexico. On his way back to the US he was detained by US Customs and searched, uncovering 30 or 40 bottles of various steroids. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary - for bodybuilders.

He was brought before a federal magistrate and charged with importation and intent to distribute a Schedule III drug. The judge looked at the unit amount of juice and figured he better not kick back to the state the prosecution of such a high-level steroid kingpin and assigned the case to federal court. And he probably won't grant bail because your buddy is considered a flight risk because he's an accused importer with alleged ties to a foreign country. Since the feds tend to feed upstream, they're not too likely to offer your buddy a deal to follow him to your house and wear a wire. But, the possibility does exist, especially if the investigation is being handled by inexperienced agents who, based on the unit amount and country involved, think they're investigating a savage steroid cartel.

If your buddy doesn't have a good lawyer he'll be convicted of steroid importation and possession with intent to distribute, and if it's his second offense, he could be looking at 20 years in prison. If someone gets hurt using the gear he imported then add another 10 years. And then there's the seven-figure fine...

While such sentences rarely ever see the top of the guidelines, the potential still exists, under the law, for a 30 year sentence for what would amount to a few bottles of testosterone you picked up for a few of your buddies along with your own. More down to reality, for a first offence: up to two years just for having it in your possession and up to five if you're importing and distributing anything even remotely considered rich.

The government has made sure there's no such thing anymore as a slap on the wrist for steroid crimes. The shameful truth of today is, if you're a national level bodybuilder and had all the gear you were going to need all year to compete hidden in a small trash bag under your bathroom sink, and your door got kicked in (after you accepted a package from a controlled delivery), the unit amount of all the gear in your house makes you a kingpin dealer and - if you don't have a good lawyer - you're going to pay a hefty fine, lose your house, your car, your job, any licenses you might have, the local media is going to portray you as something just shy of a child molester, you're going to prison for a long time and when you get out you'll have nothing coming; your felony record will haunt you long after you're off paper. Interesting risk that poses to a great many competitors these days.

Any reasonable person who knows anything about these drugs knows this is a tough pill to swallow, especially when you consider how steroids compare to other legal over the counter drugs, not to mention cigarettes and alcohol. To any reasonable person, the government's position on steroids is nothing short of lunacy.

Sports, Congress, and "Protecting the Children" 

How was public opinion swayed so far away from the truth? The media drove America into a virtual attack frenzy, concomitantly criminalizing and vilifying a non-narcotic, non-mind altering drug - a hormone naturally occurring in our bodies that can help us be stronger, more muscular, leaner, perform better and add quality to an aging male's life.

It basically boils down to this simple formula: alarmists with an agenda get the attention of the media that misstates facts, exaggerates claims, sensationalizes accounts and assigns blame without cause just to make the story sexy. This vomit lands on the over-coiffed crepe hair of vote-hungry politicians who will stand on their soggy vomit-clogged heads in front of the media and congress to lead another blind crusade against the biggest scam to ever invade politics: "save our children."

As far as steroids go, the most simplified version of what happened is this:

Steroids and other PEDs had been in fairly widespread use in bodybuilding and Olympic lifting during the late 50s and early 60s, especially internationally. While the iron sports kept a pretty low profile, the performance benefits of the drugs started seeping into other, more popular sports such as cycling and track and field. Their use proliferated, particularly in Olympic lifting, cycling, and track as well as other professional sports, particularly football - baseball came way later (at least that's what most people think).

While the NFL and MLB were still decades away from a published drug policy, an uproar was starting to build among top level amateur athletes amid failed drug tests and the marked increase in disqualifications in cycling and Olympic lifting, but nothing made quite enough noise to raise many eyebrows. Then in 1988 at the summer Olympics in Seoul, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson plucked just 9.76 seconds out of the thin air that spanned the entire Olympic games and made them the most talked about sequence of numbers in recorded history next to 666.

It's not so much that Johnson tested positive for Winstrol after the race and ostensibly cheated his way to the world record. It had more to do with the Canadian beating the American favorite, Carl Lewis, by cheating - by using steroids! - in what's considered the most popular of all summer Olympic sports. Among the Walmart crowd, the only way Canada could beat America was to cheat.

But remember, science does not prove negatives. While Johnson's positive test proved he was taking Winny, Lewis's negative test results for banned drugs does not prove he wasn't taking them. It just means the test didn't detect any. Be that as it may, controversy breeds contempt just as well as it breeds headlines, and now steroids had a face: a revered champion of the most hallowed of Olympic sports. Johnson was surely a role model for millions of kids. The proposed message that sends to our youth, combined with growing alarmist reports that high school football players were using steroids, and the politicians had the hors d'oeuvre they needed to get dinner started.

Between Johnson's disqualification in 1988 and into 1990, Congressional hearings were held to determine whether the Controlled Substances Act should be amended to include anabolic steroids along with more serious drugs like Valium, opiates, and amphetamines. Congress was able to call witnesses whose stories would help support criminalization - from the masculinisation of a female Olympic athlete, to a pro football player suggesting (without any medical evidence) that his heart problems were linked to his past steroid use, to the conditioning coach for the Philadelphia 76er's who insisted "steroids must be considered a controlled substance, no different than cocaine."

However, it was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, a guy named Kenneth Kashin, who spoke, verbatim, the words the politicians wanted to hear. The good doctor testified that "steroid use can cause an addiction with similarities to alcohol, opiate, and cocaine addiction." He talked about "dangerous criminal-like behavior while intoxicated on anabolic steroids" and individuals who have "lost control of their behavior," or "became violent." Yes, this puppet show really went on.

When all was said and done, despite the opposition of the DEA, AMA, the Department of Health and Human Services and the recommendations of the most knowledgeable experts, Congress changed the classification of anabolic steroids to a Schedule III controlled substances under Title 21 of the United States Code, which regulates food and drugs.

This is an incredibly significant milestone in the demonization history of steroids, especially where bodybuilding is concerned. It marks a turning point where a series of very interesting questions were being unanimously answered by American athletes, particularly bodybuilders, not to mention federation officials, judges, promoters, magazine publishers, supplement company executives, basically the entire iron industry. The dawn of the 90's ushered in the era of advanced pharmacology in bodybuilding just in time for the government to make most of it a federal felony.

The unanimous decision everyone ultimately made was to ignore the law. To this day, since the law was passed 24 years ago, the entire bodybuilding industry - among the competitors of all the various disciplines to the cottage industry that feeds off their bodies - there isn't the slightest hint there's a federal law that prohibits steroid use, trafficking, importing, buying it over the internet, possessing it, etc. Any top national bodybuilder and most IFBB pros could walk around with a flashing neon sign over their heads that says "steroid user," "drug dealer," "smuggler," or "internet buyer." It's a wonder they don't get caught, all of them, like yesterday, me included.

But such arrests are not as common as you'd think. Given the multitude of obvious, illegal drug-using bodybuilders out there, at least ten a week, and/or their dealers, should be getting popped all over the country. But they aren't. High profile bodybuilders, and most other athletes for that matter, seem almost immune to the law of the land. So, who is getting caught?

Athletes Walk, Recreational Lifters Do Time

What motivated Congress to ignore the advice of the experts and bulldoze this legislation through? Page after page of congressional testimony focused on just two points. First, the unfair advantage the steroid user has over those who don't use them; and second, Congress was able to leverage the nefariousness of cheating with the unsavory message that steroid use in top-level sports sends to our youth. If nothing else it would take the spotlight off of the pro athletes getting arrested for domestic violence charges, coke busts, sex offences and dog fighting. It's none of that, kids, it's steroids that sully the image of sports for you. Remember, cheating is bad. Especially if baseball is involved.

However, after two decades on the books it wasn't the cheating athletes who were getting caught - they just kept on cheating to the degree that college, and probably high school, football players figured out that it's just a matter of time before steroids come their way. It's a given.

For its intent, the law was a flop. What happened was that thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans - not athletes, but mature adult males - have been arrested, arraigned, prosecuted, convicted, forfeited property, lost their jobs and their licenses, and sentenced to prison for the personal use of anabolic steroids. Virtually none of them have been top pro bodybuilders, Olympic athletes, NFL players and certainly not baseball players. They're not cheating in sports; they're not even playing sports. But they're the ones being dragged through the system by a law that was never meant for them.

Hundreds of pages of congressional transcript focused on promoting the even playing field in sports. Not a single word was ever paid to the probability that a healthy adult male, running a light cycle of test and deca to enhance the effects of his training, would be arrested and prosecuted. He's no one's role model and he's not cheating any other athletes. He's not bothering anybody. Yet I know for sure that the nation's top steroid law firms' files would support the claim that it is he, not the cheating athlete, being snared.

In light of the number of big-named athletes not appearing in the press on steroid charges, there were, nevertheless, widespread reports of steroid use among athletes using them to cheat. There was not yet any real danger associated with them. Of course there were reports of side effects and overdrawn reports of rage, but nothing to really irk the public in terms of the dangers steroids represent, especially to our precious youth.

Eventually, by direction of the media, the public discourse shifted to become less about cheating role models and more about health. Surely, if Junior is injecting a drug in the same class as heroin, he's going to become a strung-out juicehead and end up hanging himself in his bedroom or die another gruesome death from a degenerative disease such as cancer, or completely go crazy and shoot up his high school.

It was pretty much accepted that athletes are prone to cheating and probably using steroids to do so, but at what cost? Simply passing a law to target the athlete wasn't enough (never mind the fact that it wasn't even working). America needed a stronger message to send our darling children. Cheating isn't just immoral, cheating had to be dangerous because steroids are bad drugs. But, how bad?

Steroids: They'll Kill You Until You're Dead! 

A year after the legislation was passed, the most feared man in the NFL, Lyle Alzado, was diagnosed with brain cancer he said was brought on by steroid use. A year after he was diagnosed, he died from it: a frail, weak, quivering shadow of the man he used to be. Now, according to the media, steroids had openly claimed their first victim, a high ranking NFL star who died from steroids. The only problem? It wasn't true.

Of course the truth didn't matter. The health dangers of steroids now officially had a face, and it wasn't pretty. But it was selling like hotcakes on the multi-media machine. Kids looked up to Lyle, then he took steroids and he lied and then he died because he lied and took steroids. Oh, the travesty to our precious youth! Imagine the money the therapists will be making down the road when this trauma surfaces, manifesting mild schizophrenia and issues with trust and intimacy.

This set the stage for what was about to come. Steroid hysteria was in full swing. Any aberrant violent behavior, murder or suicide involving any athlete and Geraldo Rivera would immediately "smell steroids" with that enormous schnozz of his. News reports would abound about how - without any proof - steroids caused or contributed to such shocking behavior while completely ignoring much more relevant factors such as being on mismanaged psychotropic drugs, narcotic pain killers, alcohol or a combination thereof with or without underlying psychosis.

It got to a point in the mid-90s where virtually any unusual aberrant behavior reported in the press had some mention of "steroids." Defense attorneys even invented a "steroid defense" that relied on a convincing argument that "the steroids made their client do it." It worked a few times, but then the judges got wise.

Dirty Cheaters Save Major League Baseball 

The ensuing years brought us another pivotal point in the demonization history of steroids: the infamous baseball strike. More to the point, the subsequent resurrection of the game that had all but died during the strike.

The players going back to work wasn't enough to refill the stadiums. Nope, the strike-weary fans still weren't very happy. What baseball needed was some excitement. It needed a homerun race and the Bash Brothers and Roger Maris getting bumped out of the way. They needed McGwire and Sosa and Barry Bonds cracking them out of the park in a seemingly endless volley, racking up homeruns like nobody's business. The fans came screaming back.

MLB had its best year in history: a ten-digit payday at the very height of the steroid scandal, while the players who made it happen - who were told to do "whatever it takes" to make it happen - were getting thrown under the bus. The game was juiced and even Jose Canseco said so. In 2004, during his state of the Union Address, President Bush (former managing partner of the team for which Canseco played and earned the nickname "The Godfather of Steroids") demanded a crackdown on the drugs "because they are dangerous and send a bad message to our youth."

Weeks later, then Attorney General John Ashcroft read the indictment of Victor Conte and three others involved in the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (later to become infamous as "BALCO") on national TV - the scandal that later metastasized and drew Barry Bonds into the fold. All the while Congress convened and reconvened and held hearing after hearing on steroids in baseball to the preposterous degree that it spent more time talking about steroids than it did the economy, the war in Iraq or why the levies broke during hurricane Katrina, combined.

The Taylor Hooton Tragedy

 

During one of those hearings, testimony was given by a guy named Don Hooton who blamed steroids for his son Taylor's suicide, as well as baseball itself, i.e. Bud Selig, for sending this lethal message to our youth. Hooton's convincing testimony chastising the idols of the great American pastime caught the attention of international news media and within minutes cemented Taylor Hooton's face among Alzado's and Johnson's when he gave teen steroid death a name that became a household word.

A handsome, white, 17 year-old high school baseball player from Texas named Taylor, cut down in the prime of his youth by the evil Schedule III drug that pro ball players use to cheat at America's great pastime... You might as well dress up as Hitler and set fire to the flag on your front lawn on Veteran's Day.

To us, Don Hooton's campaign is a laughing stock replete with sophomoric scare tactics and loads of erroneous suppositions, misinformation and outright lies. To the millions of bodybuilding forum members, Don Hooton is a tool. While that's a sad thing considering he buried his son, the truth is that for over a decade neither he, nor his Taylor Hooton Foundation, have proffered a singe truth when it comes to anabolic steroids. In no other single instance in the history of the steroid debate has the alarmist with the agenda made out as well for himself as Don Hooton, and mislead more people - including congress - doing it.

The ruckus Hooton has made over his son's suicide made Taylor's death a trending topic online for many years and certainly marks another milestone in the demonization of steroids. However, the Hooton case has also festered in the scientific community for over a decade now, calling into play some of the most respected and informed experts in the field. Among them, the widely accepted consensus is that steroids didn't kill Taylor Hooton.

The scene in Bigger Stronger Faster with Dr. Norm Foss pretty much epitomizes the opinion of unbiased experts. If there's a chemical to blame for inciting the ideation to hang himself, Taylor's death is, from a clinical standpoint, far more likely to have been motivated by the prescription anti-depressant drug he was taking: Lexapro, a popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). The data is just not there to put the blame on anything else.

And therein lies the rub. The Taylor Hooton suicide has been dissected numerous times over the last decade by numerous clinicians, scientists and healthcare professionals amassing quite a bit of peer reviewed and published data. Here's a brief synopsis of the published material by Dr. Jack Darkes:

"Taylor Hooton reportedly colored his hair and looked twice when he passed a mirror and was always concerned about his looks. In combination with a reported desire to be bigger suggests potential body dissatisfaction which is associated with both AAS use and suicide as a form of 'socially-prescribed perfectionism.' He had low self-esteem, a family history of depression (mother), a suicide attempt (sister) and was taking anti-depressant mediation (Lexapro). His AAS use was allegedly motivated by wanting to excel at baseball, although some sources have suggested it had more to do with personal appearance and status."

To date, there is no published data in the medical literature that suggests steroid use, or cessation of steroid use, by itself, incites suicidal ideation. However, the journals are rife to demonstrate suicidal ideation in adolescent patients treated with SSRIs. So, with so much statistical data against him, why has Hooton been blaming steroids and not SSRIs? Why is he picking on steroids, scientifically the least likely of culprits? Why is he campaigning so hard to demonize them?

Because, with such a vocal steroid attack in the wake of your son's suicide you not only get to testify before Congress during the baseball hearings, but also twice more. You get to start a non-profit foundation in your son's name and guilt guys such as Bud Selig into donating a million dollars on behalf of MLB. Then you name yourself president and decide to pay yourself up to 32% of the millions you take in to run the foundation. You get to go all over the country sounding like an expert and getting your picture in the paper and being named Texas Sports Personality of the Year by the Dallas Morning News. You don't get that going after SSRIs. Steroids made Don Hooton a celebrity. Steroids made Hooton a lot of money. Suing the makers of Lexapro would have gotten him nothing.

Either way, he's not getting his son back. Alzado's son isn't getting his dad back and history isn't taking back Johnson's nine-seven-six. So, rather than rile suburban soccer parents with sensationalistic lies that have the sky falling on our children, why not just tell the truth?

Forget the reality of their widespread use in professional sports, good science has demonstrated a real time and place for steroids among healthy adult males, especially as they age. The absolute garbage being proffered by guys such as Don Hooton is only eclipsed by the money they're making doing it. Proof, I'll reckon, is the fact that since Taylor Hooton's suicide over a decade ago, the scientific community has still not assigned "anabolic steroids" as the cause of one single teen suicide. Yet Hooton is still out there raking in millions preaching that it could still happen because - despite mountains of evidence to the contrary - Don says he knows that his son died from them. I'm sure Hooton is claiming this statistic as his victory. The only thing more revolting than Hooton's mission is the abject moron who supports him. Unfortunately, there are more than a few.

BALCO and Barry Bonds 

 

Shortly after the plea deal was reached with Victor Conte and the name "BALCO" became as much a household word as "Kleenex", the US Sentencing Commission reconvened to raise sentences for steroid cases. The 4 months Conte spent at Club Fed following a 55 million dollar investigation by the federal government was just not enough. The result of those Sentencing Commission hearings were those penalties I described at the beginning of this article.

While the circle seems complete, the story continued on. The federal agent who headed the BALCO investigation, Jeff Novitzky, became sort of a cult anti-hero, carrying the torch onward in his self-appointed fight against steroids. While there was never a formal order ever given to go after BALCO, Novitzky did, and to this day continues to do his best to lock up as many athletes as he can. Novitzky's tactics usually push the limits of legality and ethics, cheating just as much as the athletes he's chasing. The only difference is that he really doesn't ever truly win.

The BALCO case didn't yield much in the form of prison time for any of those snared in his investigation - at least not for steroids anyway - although several promising athletic careers were smashed and Olympic medals were taken back. Gold medal sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery actually did jail time, but for perjury and writing bad checks, not juice. Nevertheless, when the dust settled, Novitzky still had his claws in homerun king Barry Bonds, at that moment the most famous athlete on earth.

Novitzky's entire impetus for going after BALCO was to get Barry Bonds. Now he had him where he wanted him. Novitzky knew Bonds had taken steroids. He knew that Bonds's trainer, Gregg Anderson, gave/administered them to Bonds. All he had to do was prove it by getting Anderson to testify against Bonds, his childhood friend. Novitzky, the master of getting athletes to roll on each other, couldn't get Anderson to talk no matter how many months he spent locked away on contempt charges for refusing to testify. Ultimately, Anderson got out of jail. Finally, after an appeals court upheld his sentence in 2013, Bonds started serving his whopping two months of house arrest... for obstruction of justice. 

Lance Armstrong

Ten full years and tens of millions spent since the BALCO raid that started it all and Novitzky still doesn't have a drug conviction of an athlete. So, what does he do in light of what could only be construed as a black eye for the government? Novitzky spends millions more going after America's favorite son, Lance Armstrong. Seven Tour victories? He must have been on something.

First, Novitzky went after disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis and promised him immunity if he rolled on former teammate, Armstrong. Naturally, Landis agreed and then suddenly the most tested athlete in the world - who never failed a drug test - was being brought down by an "administrative positive." Landis, and an assortment of others, ratted out Lance. Luckily for Lance, the government is easing off on steroid prosecutions and opted not to prosecute him. Novitzky got to the altar a little late.

The Obama administration has openly said that enough time has been spent on steroids; those resources can be used for better things. Lance did have to step down from his philanthropic foundation and give back all his Tour victories as well as the silver medal he won in the Olympics. I'm sure we all sleep better at night now.

Novitzky's star seems to be fading. There's no one really left after Lance. Although he could start going after rappers. LL Cool J looks pretty jacked.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

A closer analysis of current events might look like we've come full circle. While the laws and penalties for steroids are quite unfavorable right now, you have to work a little harder at getting caught. My old friend Dr. Gary Wadler, a former leader of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said, "I don't think this administration has the same vigor as the previous administrations on the [PED] issue. That was clear from the beginning when Barack Obama was running for election [in 2008]."

So, where does that leave us? Well, you can still get 30 years for testosterone, if you get caught. That's a big if. It does however seem to be a bit smaller of an if as it was a few years ago. The hysteria seems to have ebbed. The alarmists have lost much credibility from parent groups calling creatine a steroid and Don Hooton proclaiming that veteran actor Tom Hanks opened a show on Broadway "high on steroids" for having had a cortisone shot in his injured hand. Don sounds a bit desperate.

Steroids are perhaps a bit less vilified today and have in fact been inducted into the modern American lexicon. "On steroids" is a phrase openly accepted even in advertising to depict the deluxe version of just about anything from pick-up trucks to non-stick cookware. Baseball is boring again. And any time any athlete ever does anything noteworthy it will automatically be assumed that he's "on steroids."

Chances are he is and no government willing to enforce laws against it is ever going to stop him. Part of the reason for that is the high degree of chemical engineering going on today that was extremely rare just a few years ago. Designer labs are certainly the new frontier. And the feds know it.

There's a big difference between hunting down high-profile elite athletes and cracking down on the new forms of steroids designed to sneak around the law. While the government might not be chasing big named athletes around with the wild geese, lawmakers are still reaping mileage out of the steroid issue. At the time of this writing, Reps. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) and Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) have introduced legislation in the House designed to crack down on anabolic steroids masquerading as dietary supplements.

These "designer steroids" come in the wake of what was leaned from the BALCO case. The products are made by reverse engineering illegal steroids and slightly changing their chemical composition. Such reengineering avoids placement on the DEA's list of controlled substances, creating a nice fat loophole for athletes to pee into. Urine tests can only detect known substances. If you're taking something unknown, then you can't fail a drug test.

The House bill is the next step toward full passage of a law that will further empower the DEA with new tools to identify and quickly respond when new designer anabolic steroids are introduced and falsely marketed as dietary supplements. How much of a bearing will this have on us? Very little. The point is just to show that while the steroid issue may have lost its luster in the mainstream, there are lawmakers who still think the platform can buy them some votes.

Just remember, the public stigma against steroids may have relaxed a little and the government may have decided they've had enough congressional hearings on steroids, but that doesn't mean that getting popped for them isn't still a reality, nor that the effect that bust will have on you and your family will be anything less than profound, and it will get worse when your local paper runs the story.

Apparently, this is what's known as "evolution."

 
John Romano

John Romano is a longtime industry insider and held the position of Senior Editor at Muscular Development magazine for 18 years. He has authored several books in the bodybuilding and fitness field and has appeared as a performance enhancement advocate in programs on HBO, ESPN, ABC's 20/20, and numerous radio talk shows, as well as consulted on, and appeared in, the acclaimed documentary Bigger Stronger Faster. Romano resides in Guadalajara, Mexico with his wife and son where they own and operate one of three Gold’s Gyms in the city.