Sarah E. Brown ’09

Sleekly dressed and towering over her podium at the University of Pennsylvania’s Harrison Auditorium, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star Sheryl Swoopes appeared Tuesday, March 20th as the keynote speaker of QPenn, a week-long celebration of queer diversity at UPenn.

At six feet tall, muscle-bound Swoopes is a striking embodiment of female power. Despite her intimidating physique, she enraptured the audience with her anecdotes and humorous asides, often revealing a glowing smile that was more charming than fierce.

Swoopes has received numerous awards and honors, including WNBA Most Valuable Player (2000, 2002) and Defensive Player of the Year (2000, 2002, 2003), yet she claimed her most satisfying achievements have taken place off the courts as an advocate for gay rights.

Swoopes had been living a life that seemed idyllic—traveling the world to play professional women’s basketball while also married to a man and the mother of a son. Although she claimed her marriage dissolved for reasons other than her sexual orientation, shortly after filing for divorce in 1999 Swoopes started seeing long-time female friend and WNBA coach Alisa Scott.

Her clandestine partnership with Scott forced her to come to terms with being a lesbian, but Swoopes waited to come out due to concerns about how it would affect her family, friends, son, and WNBA teammates.

“Finally, I realized that I was living for others, and that I had to live my life for me.”

In October 2005, Swoopes could no longer reconcile her double life, and made the decision to come out to the public as a lesbian.

“I woke up and realized I couldn’t lie to the world anymore. It ended up being the best decision I ever made in my life,” said Swoopes.

After discussing whether to tell the press she was gay with various friends and family members whom she had already come out to several years earlier, Swoopes had just one person left to tell about her decision—her mother.

“My mom knew I was gay, but she thought it was a phase. I could sense she was fighting to keep me quiet about it. Finally, she realized I had to [come out] not just for me, but for people struggling to come out everywhere.”

After coming out, Swoopes received tremendous media attention, which she said has generally been positive. She also experienced an outpouring of support from her teammates, the queer community and its allies. Swoopes credited her relatively easy coming out process to the prior outings of lesbian athletes such as tennis legend Martina Navratilova and golf champion Rosie Jones.

“Being a lesbian is not a disease, it’s just who you are. I am grateful to be in a position to affect others in a positive way. I hope that anyone struggling to come out knows that as long as you believe in yourself it’ll all be okay.”