In 2020, at the peak of his career, Dwight Howard had a list of accomplishments many of his pro basketball peers would envy: a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers, multiple selections to NBA all-star teams, a seven-figure salary and sportswriters debating whether the Atlanta native is among the greatest players in history.

In October, 2023, the basketball legend was the hot topic of conversation in the sports world, on social media and the Black community when a lawsuit, quietly filed in an Atlanta suburban civil court, erupted into a bombshell news story. The suit accuses Howard of sexually assaulting a would-be lover at his home in the summer of 2021, after the alleged victim said he didn’t want to join in a threesome with Howard and another man.

Yet despite the disturbing allegations in the lawsuit, the case became a tabloid-level scandal because the alleged victim, Stephen Harper, and Howard are both Black men.

In court papers, Howard denies he assaulted Harper and insists their encounter was consensual; he is not presently facing any criminal charges and the victim reportedly balked at filing a police report. But the salacious news opened a Pandora’s box of issues involving race, masculinity and how sexual assault is reported in the gay community.

The accusations also reignited long-standing rumors about Howard’s sexual orientation; some speculate it’s the reason he’s no longer playing in the NBA despite Hall of Fame credentials. But experts say the rumors themselves are evidence of deep-seated homophobia prevalent in men’s professional sports.

“The last closet, in many respects, is the male locker room,” says Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, a progressive news magazine.

The Lawsuit Revealed Disturbing Details

In the lawsuit, Harper alleges that he and Howard connected through social media, traded sexually explicit texts and made arrangements to meet one night in Howard’s home. After consensual kissing, the suit alleges, Harper and Howard were watching a movie when a third man -- whom Harper says Howard invited for sex without telling him -- showed up.

Harper told Howard he didn’t want a threesome, but Howard assured him he didn't have to participate, and began to have sex with the other man, the lawsuit states. Before long, however, Howard allegedly began to grope Harper; when Harper told him no, Howard -- who stands 6 feet 10 inches tall and weighs some 240 lbs -- forcibly stripped him, performed oral sex on him, then shoved his penis into Harper’s mouth and ejaculated, according to the lawsuit.

News reports say Harper went to police in 2022, several months after the encounter, but after initially answering officers’ questions he declined to participate in a criminal investigation and the matter was dropped. Harper then sued Howard in Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, in October.

Same-Sex Intimate Partner Violence Often Goes Unreported

Damien Frierson, a social scientist and researcher, says it’s common for male victims of same-sex intimate-partner violence to avoid reporting it in official channels, in part because law enforcement is generally trained to help victimized women, not men.

Victim support systems “are often talking in binaries, from a heterosexual, heterocentric perspective,” making it difficult for the system to effectively help male victims, he says. “The woman is usually the victim, and the perpetrator is generally a man. We often don't really know what to do when there isn't that binary of a man or a woman, or if (the assault) is not happening in a heterosexual context.”

Solid data is hard to find, but research indicates about 26% of gay men have experienced some form of sexual coercion or intimate partner violence, Frierson says. But “that's in relation to who's actually chosen to report it,” he says, and the actual percentage is likely much higher.

“The way that we talk about it, the way that we promote (interventions), the way we do education around it is largely heterocentric,” he says. That, he says, effectively marginalizes LGBTQ victims, and results in underreporting.

“If you don't see yourself in a particular system -- if you haven't been taught that what we understand is domestic violence or sexual assault actually includes you -- you're not going to report,” Frierson says. It can be particularly insidious for Black victims, who may not trust police.

The Pressure To Stay Closeted Is Real

When news broke of the lawsuit, most sports news outlets stuck to the facts and struck a neutral tone. But Stephen A. Smith, ESPN’s outspoken, high-profile sports analyst, took a different approach on his daily national podcast.

"Eew! EEW! I can’t!,” he told millions of listeners in October, after recounting the details of Harper’s allegations against Howard. "To each its own. You gay, and that is what you want to do? Cool! I don't have a problem with everybody living their life. I'm not here to judge...But the details!"

Smith then declared that locker-room whispers about Howard’s purported bisexuality killed his basketball career: “That's why teams didn't want you, whether they would admit it or not.”

But Howard pushed back, declaring on an Instagram video in October that what goes on in his bedroom “is my damn business. Whatever you're doing in your bedroom is your damn business … This sh*t didn't even happen.”

Dave Zirin said Smith’s winking commentary -- and Howard’s vehement Instagram livestream rejection of it -- overshadows news that a well-known, elite-level athlete may have committed sexual assault. But Zirin also sees the dynamic as evidence that “the pressure to stay closeted (in pro sports) is very real.”

Heteronormative presentation, and a degree of homophobia, “is baked into the cake of sports,” Zirin says, pointing to Jason Collins, a former NBA role player who came out in 2012 just before retiring from the league. To date, Collins has been the only openly gay player in league history.

It’s a truism in sports culture that “to be gay is to be defined as feminine and to be feminine is to be defined as weak,” Zirin says. “And to be weak is not going to get you the big contract or the championship ring.”

Nicolette Aduama, senior associate director for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, concurs.

“We know that there are gay players. There’s probably nonbinary players in the different professional leagues here in the US,” she says. But “Where are they? What's preventing them from walking as their true selves? What does that look like? And how are you judged?”

The Rigid Confines Of Black Masculinity

Then there’s the matter of race. Academic studies have shown that Black men often face stereotypes that depict them as hypermasculine, aggressive, or emotionally detached. Broadly speaking, however, those stereotypes tend to be embraced and celebrated in the Black community as well as in sports culture.

At the same time, the Black community has a history of ridiculing gay men as effeminate and weak. Questions about Howard’s true sexual identity -- he has fathered several children with different women -- have put him in an unforgiving spotlight.

“We know not all communities are as understanding and welcoming of relationships that are not heterosexual,” Aduama says. “The Black and brown communities are where I think there's still a lot of work that needs to be done related to acceptance. I've heard some of the interviews and read some comments online, and (Black) people are not being nice about it. I don't really hear anyone coming to (Howard’s) defense.”

She goes on: “Would it be different if he were white? If he were Asian? Maybe.”

Ultimately, Aduama says, it’s important to keep in mind that Howard is being accused of an act of sexual violence that he says was consensual, and his culpability for what happened that night in 2021 likely will be sorted out in a Gwinnett County courtroom. It’s equally important to remember that Howard is at the intersection of complex identity issues that can’t easily be defined on a podcast, on social media or a newspaper article.

Still, she says, even public figures like Howard have private lives, and speculating on his misses the point.

“Dwight Howard said it himself: ‘What I do in my bedroom is my business,’” but it’s unclear if it remains so when someone alleges harm, Aduama says. “I don't know that we've answered that question as a society.”