Tag: LGBT Athletes

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/johnny-weir-married-boyfriend-victor-voronov-year-eve-article-1.999832

Johnny Weir s all about razzle-dazzle showmanship, but this New Year’s Eve, the Olympic skater threw a little bling into the mix.

Weir, 27, tied the knot with boyfriend Victor Voronov to close out 2011, and tweeted his excitement to his nearly 103,000 Twitter followers Saturday.

“I’m married!” he wrote, later clarifying that the actual wedding will take place in the summer, though “all the official stuff is done now! No more livin’ in sin!”

Voronov retweeted his husband’s sentiments, adding that he was “ringing in the New Year with my new hubby @JohnnyGWeir! #ELATED.”

Weir, who remained famously mum about his private life before coming out just one year ago, spoke about his impending nuptials just a few days prior to the new year.

http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7394558/commentary-league-commissioners-pave-way-gay-athletes-espn-magazine

AS 2011 GIVES WAY TO 2012, “don’t ask, don’t tell” has disappeared from the military, gay adoption is commonplace, Houston and Portland have gay mayors, and same-sex marriage is legal in half a dozen states and counting. Meanwhile, numerous athletes and coaches have told me they couldn’t care less if a teammate were to come out, suggesting now is the time for openly gay players in mainstream team sports.

So why are we still waiting? It’s been more than a decade since former No. 1 tennis player Amelie Mauresmo said she was gay, six years since WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes did the same. More recently, Portland State basketball coach Sherri Murrell, NBA team executive Rick Welts, Oregon State softball coach Kirk Walker and Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley all disclosed their homosexuality while still active, to generally positive reaction. Yet no openness movement has followed. No active male athlete in any of the major leagues has followed the path of Mauresmo and Swoopes. It’s a reminder that quite some time has passed since sports stood progressively ahead of the rest of the country, when Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey and Happy Chandler integrated baseball in 1947 — before the military, hundreds of school districts and thousands of churches.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/12/31/Phillys_Search_for_an_Out_Pro_Athlete/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvocatecomDailyNews+%28Advocate.com+Daily+News%29

Writer Robert Huber does the math: with the number of professional athletes playing on Philadelphia’s teams, including the Phillies for baseball, and the Eagles for football, the 76ers for basketball, and so on, there must be at least a few gay players in the City of Brotherly Love. But in his quest to find out whether there are gay male players, he also found that some players know it might be simply uncomfortable to dress alongside another athlete, knowing he’s gay.

 

http://www.dallasvoice.com/dallas-mavericks-owner-mark-cuban-nba-openly-gay-player-3-5-years-1097009.html

 

Mark Cuban, the gay-friendly owner of the Dallas Mavericks, told TMZ recently that he believes the NBA will see an openly gay player before the league sees a female head coach.

Cuban noted that Nancy Lieberman coached the Mavericks’ D-League team, the Texas Legends, last year. But he said coaching in the NBA isn’t one of Lieberman’s goals. And although he thinks it will definitely happen eventually, Cuban said it will take some time for a female coach to work her way up through the NBA ranks. Then the topic shifted to the question of a gay player. Here’s a transcript of the exchange between Cuban and TMZ host Harvey Levin:

http://www.glaad.org/blog/nbas-new-labor-agreement-includes-discrimination-protections

The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement, signed by the players’ union and ratified Thursday by the NBA’s board of governors, includes language protecting players from discrimination based on sexual orientation. (The league already has those protections in place for employees.)

“I am pleased to announce that we have concluded the collective bargaining process and have reached an agreement that addresses many significant issues that were challenges to our league,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern.  “This collective bargaining agreement will help us move toward a better business model, a more competitive league and better alignment between compensation and performance.”

The decision to allow the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association (NAGAAA) to enforce a rule of two “straight” players came in a lawsuit filed by three bisexual men who claim they were kicked out of the Gay Softball World Series because they “weren’t gay enough,” the Courthouse News Service reported.
A gay softball association in the US can limit the number of heterosexual players on its teams, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

US District Judge John Coughenour wrote in his ruling, “Plaintiffs have failed to argue that there is a compelling state interest in allowing heterosexuals to play gay softball.”

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Gay-team-can-limit-straight-players-060211

SEATTLE (AP) — A gay softball organization has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to three players who were disqualified from its 2008 Gay Softball World Series because of their perceived heterosexuality.

And as part of the settlement announced Monday, their team will be awarded the second-place trophy it was denied at the time.

The men — Stephen Apilado, Laron Charles and John Russ — filed the federal lawsuit against the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance last year, claiming they had been discriminated against because they were bisexual, not gay.

http://news.yahoo.com/banned-players-settle-gay-softball-group-183040349.html

http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2008/08/10/college-wrestlers-on-gay-porn-site/

Giving new meaning to Big Red, a campus website that covers the University of Nebraska has discovered that two of the university’s wrestlers have strutted their stuff on a gay porn site, including an NCAA champion.

http://www.outsports.com/os/index.php/component/content/article/54-coming-out-stories-that-have-appeared-on-outsports/333-gay-wrestler-

Akil Patterson felt he never fit in as a college football player, where he spent a lot of time partying and coping with his sexual identity. He is now blossoming as a gay man and competitive wrestler.