Basketball Player Claims She was Denied Coaching Job Because She’s No Longer Gay

Mark Judge | November 2, 2017
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A former professional basketball player is claiming that she was offered and then denied a job because she is no longer a homosexual.

As the Washington Post is reporting, Camille LeNoir, 31, was a star player at the University of Southern California and a second-round draft pick for WNBA’s Washington Mystics. Last year LeNoir was offered a job when Mark Trakh, her former college coach, offered her an assistant position on his staff at New Mexico State University.

LeNoir accepted the job, but two days before she was to board a plane for New Mexico Trakh, 62, called to withdraw the offer. The coach had watched an online video posted in 2011 in which LeNoir discussed women’s basketball, her Christianity and her sexuality. He told LeNoir to take the video down or else it would damage her career.

In the video, LeNoir said that she lived as a homosexual for seven years, even as she went to church. “I was trying to ease my conscience,” she says. “The word says, ‘If you love me you’ll obey my commandments.’ I was professing to know him but with my actions and my lifestyle I was denying him.” She no longer considers herself gay.

LeNoir said she no longer identifies as gay. In the video, she said homosexuality is “wrong” and “not worth losing your soul over.” She also claimed that “homosexuality has become the norm” in women’s basketball.

“I felt the job was taken away because of my heterosexuality,” LeNoir, 31, said in a recent interview.

Rick Maese of the Post reports that LeNoir is suing New Mexico State in U.S. District Court, saying she was discriminated against because of her religious beliefs and sexual identity. Maese writes that “New Mexico State acknowledges in court filings that Trakh rescinded the offer but denies any discrimination charges. A federal judge in California allowed the lawsuit to move forward and will preside over a unique case that spans sport, religion and sexuality, and provides a small window into the culture surrounding women’s basketball.”

In court filings, New Mexico State says that LeNoir’s feelings about homosexuality shared in the video “would have had an adverse impact” on her “ability to effectively coach and recruit players who identify as LGBT.”

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