Pink Locker Room Rerun

I had only been here about two months in 2007 when a former University of Iowa law professor threatened to take Iowa's famous pink football visitor's locker room to court. I'm not even sure that legal action was ever filed. Can't find any further coverage.

But that locker room has been back in the news lately. We've run a pair of guest columns on the subject. You can find them here and here.

I also thought about writing something. But then I looked back at my December 2007 column. I think it still stands. It also makes me wonder whether we only have this fight in years when Iowa fails to make a bowl game.

So join me in the wayback machine. Dec. 13, 2007:

The Hawkeye football team may be home for the holidays, but the pink locker room fight is headed to the Judicial Bowl. This one makes even the frozen blue field at Boise look appealing.

In case you missed it, the former University of Iowa law professor who assailed the Hayden Fry-inspired pink visitor's locker room as insensitive to the oversensitive has filed a civil rights action in federal court. Jill Gaulding now practices law in Minnesota, but Kinnick pink still makes her see red. So much for Hayden's theory that the paint scheme would have a calming influence.

Of course, for the commentators and outrageaholics of the land, this is great news. It's one of those fish-in-a-barrel targets. The Bill O'Reillys of the world will see the soft, politically correct underbelly of goofy liberalism exposed. And it's feeding time.

The pink lawsuit can effortlessly be lumped in with the war on Christmas trees and other yuletide displays, the headline-grabbing efforts to take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, the skirmishes to delete devotionals from graduations and football games and all those speech-police actions making news on college campuses nationwide.

They'll say it just shows how out of touch progressives have become. They'll insist these eye-rolling disputes are a signal that the civil rights movement has nothing better to do. And that will sound real good to folks who like things just the way they are, or how they once were.

And that's why sideshow squabbles like the battle of the pink locker room are a sad distraction.

Because for every one of these courtroom melodramas with very little impact on our everyday lives, there are scores of real civil rights battles being fought that might have a lasting impact. Most of them aren't sexy enough to grab headlines.

And they're being waged because things aren't OK the way they are. Our racially skewed system of criminal justice is badly in need of reforms. Our schools aren't making nearly enough progress in closing the wide achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white classmates. Discrimination of all stripes still runs rampant on the job and in the housing market. Women still earn less than men.

One of our two proud political parties seems intent on nominating a presidential standard-bearer who vows to continue marginalizing millions of Americans because of their sexual orientation. An immigration debate that's too often tinged with hate has exposed a very different kind of underbelly on the other end of the political spectrum.

Sure, small battles that appear trivial at first can have a big impact. Sometimes civil rights have been gained one bus seat and lunch counter stool at a time. But I'm still not sure how repainting a football locker room will pave the way for greater tolerance and acceptance.

It does give people an excuse to chuckle and tune out a message they ought to hear. How can you expect to be taken seriously when you're protesting locker room color schemes? What's your battle cry? Hey hey, ho, ho, that pink and mauve has got to go?