Source: New York Times
During the final 10 minutes of many Rangers home games, the spotlights focus on Section 407 as Larry Goodman, a longtime season-ticket holder, pumps up the crowd with a goofy dance.

Kevin Jennings said he stopped attending Rangers games for a month because of homophobic epithets shouted at players.

As Goodman’s routine is broadcast on the giant monitors above the ice, a familiar chant picks up momentum. “Ho-mo Lar-ry!” the crowd shouts. “Ho-mo Lar-ry!”

The chant is one example of what several gay hockey fans describe as a toxic atmosphere during Rangers games and that Madison Square Garden, which owns the team, is not doing nearly enough to address their concerns.

Kevin Jennings, a Rangers fan who is gay, said he stopped attending home games for about a month this season because he felt so uncomfortable with the homophobic epithets that are shouted to the players.

Ray Stankes, 50, of Bayside, Queens, said he canceled season tickets he had had for 25 years in part because of the antigay environment.

“This is a place where I grew up, and I never really felt uncomfortable at the Garden,” Stankes said. “I didn’t wear it on my sleeve that I’m gay. If I take a friend who is also gay who, for lack of a better term, is not as masculine, I’m always sitting there a little tense. Like, is somebody going to say something to us? And it’s made it not quite as fun as it used to be.”

Other fans recalled that the crowd booed when the name of the New York City Gay Hockey Association, a recreational league, flashed briefly across the jumbo screen.

Hockey has a loyal fan base within New York’s gay community, including the members of the New York Gay Hockey Association, which oversees 5 teams and claims 150 members. Many gay Rangers fans grew up attending games with their families and say they make a distinction between raucous tradition and comments that single out a specific group.

Stankes said he turned down an invitation by the gay hockey group to attend a Rangers game en masse a few years ago. As he feared, the crowd booed when the name of the group flashed on the monitors. But Kagan said the fans’ reaction surprised and hurt him. “I never expected that at all,” he said.

“It’s a pervasive problem,” said Jennings, who is the executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a nonprofit group that promotes tolerance of gays and lesbians. “I took my godson a few months ago. I won’t take him again. He’s 6. I don’t want him looking around and seeing other men engaging in this behavior and thinking this is the way you behave.”

Jennings and Jeff Kagan, the director of the gay hockey league, wrote to Rangers General Manager Glen Sather in November and asked him to create a fan-education program that denounces antigay remarks.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who is gay, joined them in January and in her letter urged the Rangers to take “swift action to educate their fans about the importance of tolerance and diversity — qualities that have made this city great.”

Since then, the Rangers have broadcast warnings that they will remove fans who behave offensively and said they have posted additional security throughout the arena.

Barry Watkins, a spokesman for Madison Square Garden, said in a statement that while the majority of Rangers fans behave respectfully at games, “homophobic or racially or culturally insensitive behavior is unacceptable at any event at Madison Square Garden, and we have taken aggressive steps to deal with the offensive behavior of a very small minority of game attendees.”

Several people who violated the Garden’s policy against using offensive language have been ejected from the arena, and more have been given written and verbal warnings, he said, adding that some of those ejections were for antigay remarks.

The Rangers turned down Jennings’s offer to help M.S.G. create a public-service announcement urging fans to be more respectful. Jennings’s group has produced similar announcements for MTV and other outlets.

Several spectators interviewed at a Rangers home game Tuesday spoke proudly of the fans’ high-intensity devotion to their team. Some fans noted with pride that brawls break out in the stands nearly as often as they do on the ice.

Full article: When Tradition and Taunts Collide: Gay Hockey Fans Criticize Garden - New York Times