Vikings Host LGBTQ Summit with Chris Kluwe as a Guest Speaker
Joe Oberle
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A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Chris Kluwe last punted for the Minnesota Vikings in 2012. No greater evidence of that was the sight of Kluwe on stage at the TCO Performance Center Eagan, where the organization was hosting the first-ever Vikings LGBTQ Summit. A dustup between Kluwe and the organization back during the state of Minnesota legislative battle over the sanctity of marriage and LGBTQ rights became the impetus for this summit, and now Kluwe was in town as one of the guest speakers.
“The NFL has been great, and I have been very happy to see how much the Vikings have embraced it,” Kluwe said. “This could have just been ‘we’re going to go to a Ramada Inn and have it in the hotel bar.’ But this is what makes it feel like it is an actual useful learning event that can be used toward actually making structural change.”
The summit, which is the first of its kind in the NFL and certainly for the Vikings, may have been borne out of a difficult situation, but what it became was a very moving, informative and enlightening event. It featured numerous athletes—Olympic diver Greg Louganis, professional soccer player Joanna Lohman and transgender triathlete Chris Mosier among them—who are members of the LGBTQ community, and they spoke our their experiences.
From stories of gay slurs uttered in locker rooms to stories of shunning by teammates to the fact that LGBTQ athletes drop out of sports at twice the rate of other athletes, nothing was off limits. Even to the point of former Viking offensive lineman Esera Tuaolo bringing up a regrettable statement made by a Vikings coach (one that he apologized for making) that eventually led to this day.
Kluwe and everyone else in attendance were quick to commend the Vikings for hosting the event, and the organization deserves plenty of credit for taking that negative incident and turning it into this positive event. The team is taking a leadership role (something talked about a lot at that summit) in addressing these issues and it hopes for more to come from it, as many power brokers from the local community, business and political leaders and representatives from 12 NFL teams joined the audience at the beautiful new TCO Studios.
“I would hope so; I can’t say for certain because I don’t know,” Kluwe said when asked if there will be more of these kinds of events to come. “But the idea is that this is something that will continue to grow and snowball and allow teams to understand that we are moving into a new age. This isn’t the same old NFL; things have got to change, because the rest of the world is changing and you’ve got to keep up.”
The event was one of the first for the Vikings at their new state-of-the-art studio, which rivals anything in the league and might even make KARE broadcaster and reporter Jana Shortal (who moderated two of the panel discussions) just a little jealous. (“I work in television; we don’t have anything like this,” she said.)
“It’s a great PR win for the Vikings, too, because it allows them to say, ‘hey, check out our beautiful facility,” said Kluwe, who wore showed up to the event in his California cool jeans and flip-flops. “It’s not just for football. We’re actually in the community trying to help out.’ Which is great thing for a football team to do.”
It was not lost on Kluwe that this event was just one day removed from an event up in Duluth that featured the ruler of the free world—someone who hasn’t exactly been supportive of the LGBTQ community since he became President of the United States.
“Let’s not forget, just last night there was a rally up in Duluth,” Kluwe said. “Hopefully, this gathering kind of shows that there’s a counterweight to that. Whereas, you sort of have this regressive wave sweeping across the country, but we can still fight back. We can still be better people. It doesn’t have to be ‘oh, no, things are bad. Just give up.’”
And Kluwe says he is hopeful looking forward. He was truly moved by everything the Vikings did in putting together a first class event, and he thinks it possible to make a difference.
“Event like this . . . if a lot of businesses that are traditionally seen as conservative bastions turn and say, ‘No, this is a line we’re not willing to cross. We’re going to change. We’re going to change the world,’ that goes a long way towards changing broader culture as well and mitigating those problems,” Kluwe said. “So, the fact that the NFL is doing this, especially in this political climate, especially after what [Donald] Trump did do with the players kneeling, this is a fairly big thing. Because, it is kind of saying, ‘we are going to be better. We are not going to get down in the muck with you. We are going to try to make the world a better place.’”