Last night my wife (who threw me out but still wears her wedding and engagement rings) and I accompanied my son to an annual recognitions dinner for the top 5% players in the county; my son won an all section award. Cheers to him; I am really proud of his hard work. Now to the gay part. So a mom sitting near us, who doesn't know me at all, says "is it me or are these soccer kids just the most gorgeous creatures who have walked the planet?; it's like they're all models". I said " it's not just you." My wife glared at me but the women didn't react; she didn't get it. Oh yeah, and they're stylish too. My son said to me later that all the girls say that the football players are ugly next to the soccer players. Is it really true? So I remember that my daughter who's older had told me that my sons soccer coach is gay. I asked her how she knew this; she told me everyone knew even though he never said a word. So I asked my son if he thought Coach was gay. He told me yes. How do you know? Well, he said. He never touches a boy at all, even to shake his hand or pat him on the back; it's not normal. It's like he is watching out that no one will accuse him of molesting a kid. He doesn't even come into the locker room so we all think he's gay and scared someone will know and accuse him so he just never touches any kid or says anything weird at all. In a way this sounds sad to me but I also feel it's a relief for people to know that not every gay coach is a pervert. But, to check on this, I asked the town gossip. She told me he is gay and he has told some people.
To the person, often male, who wants to serve in hands-on capacity in education, and I mean in the classroom and on the athletic field, the climate has become hostile because every stupid gesture, touch, or word could be construed as some kind of violation. Is tapping a student or athlete on the shoulder to get their attention a transgression? A person shouldn't even need to think of such a thing. I think there should be cameras in classrooms to ward off unfounded accusations. That would be tougher to pull off in athletic venues. The locker room is THE issue when either a player or coach comes out as gay. When interviewed, that's what the ones who get wigged out all reliably mention. How does the coach look? Haha. One football coach at the local high school was matinee idol grade. Fifteen year old girls talked about this 35-ish guy. I'd bet some 15 year old boys whose sexuality was less rigid thought about him, too. People still talk about him on Facebook. He held out on marriage for a long time, but finally tied the knot. I still think he was "too good looking to be straight," an expression I learned in my 20s. But, who knows? So sad that this whole ordeal, as described in your post, has increasingly become an occupational hazard.
It's not only the men who have to watch every move, either. My wife works with special needs kids at a local grade school and can't so much as help them zip up their pants after they use the bathroom without someone there as a witness. And I do a 10-minute music session with the religious education kids at my church once a week, and had to take an extensive course on childhood sex abuse, and go through a background check just so I could sit at the piano and teach them a song or two. Pretty ironic, really, since the only person I would ever consider messing with is one of the male teachers!
I think that this is pretty sad. I am the exact same way, I mentor a high school robotics team (which is mostly male). I am EXTREMELY careful with what I do or say around them - I'm obviously not out to them (and that's something of an issue with coming out at work, since the mentoring relationship is brokered through work), and probably never will be - it's not appropriate. This creates problems when the students ask me about things like my girlfriend or whatever. I just tend to deflect such questions, and that's been a workable strategy up til now. Now that I'm completely out and organizing local gay events, etc it's only a matter of time until someone puts 2+2 together, just as they appear to have done with this coach.
