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We Are The Champions
By Cyd Zeigler
Jr.
 First, they attacked the fashion industry. Men like Christian Dior, Gianni Versace, and Calvin Klein conquered fashion with little resistance from the straights.
Then, as they got more brave, they targeted other, more upstanding, sectors in society. They even focused on the Boy Scouts but, so far, have been turned away.
Now, gays are taking over sports.
It all started in 1977. Unsuspecting arena managers, constantly on the look-out for hot new music to play at sporting events, stumbled across an album called "News of the World." It contained two tracks that quickly became mainstays in the world of sports, with tens of thousands of people stomping their feet and clapping their hands to the voice and words of a full-fledge, card-carrying cocksucker. "We Will Rock You" took off and took on new meaning.
In the 80s, coverage of the Olympic games was dominated by at least one gold-medal-winning gay guy as Greg Louganis captured the imaginations of Americans with his multi-colored Speedo and his gutty performance on the diving board.
Then, in the late 90s, it all got out of hand. High school football players were coming out of the closet; and one of their teams was actually OK with it. High school coaches - a soccer coach in Connecticut and a track coach in California - were declaring their homosexuality.
The new millennium has brought on an all-out assault on the locker rooms, playing fields, and closets that have so long dominated athletics.
Over the last two years, not only have they crept out of their closets (or lockers, I guess), but they've crept into the locker rooms of (assumed to be) mostly straight teams like the Green Bay Packers and Atlanta Falcons. They're featured on sports talk radio. They're dating Major League Baseball Players. They're even hosting the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe!
To be sure, the resistance is forming. Time and time again, we're hearing from athletes (who claim to be straight) that they don't want gay men on their teams. They don't want them in their leagues. Hell, they don't even want them cutting their hair.
But San Francisco 49ers running back Garrison Hearst's comments several weeks ago seem laughable at this point: "I don't want any faggots in this locker room." Uh, too late. The fact that Hearst has played with gays (on the field, of course) is as inevitable as the Bengals finishing last in their division.
Is nothing sacred to the bastion of heterosexuality that is American sports? Surely the hallowed fields of the weekend warriors, where former high school stars relive their glory, are still the sacred grounds of post-game beer busts talking about the wife, kids and, well, busts. But now, the gays are even winning "straight" sports leagues in Denver, Dallas, and New York City. Of course, the latter is on the gayest island of the world - so, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
"Gay people dominate everything," says Gary Skogen, who plays middle for the Colorado Climax. "They are just now getting around to sports."
While Garrison Hearst has taken over for John Rocker as the new spokesperson for "Athletes against Sissies in Sports" (ASS), it's been a broad campaign at the local level to try to keep gays off the field and out of the locker rooms. "Fag" and "queer" are thrown around the ice in these "straight" leagues more than the Raiders move up and down the West Coast, and you could see why:
"Their cheering section is composed mostly of their girlfriends," says Skogen, "and I can guarantee none of them get laid when they lose to our team."
It's really no wonder gay teams are beginning to dominate local sports leagues; that goes especially for fashion-conscious New York City where the all-gay Lions won their "straight" summer league.
"We all have matching jerseys and socks," says Lion player Jeff Kagan. "It's all about looks, isn't it? The straight teams never pay that much attention to their appearance, and that probably hurts team morale. Vogue tells us it's better to look good than to feel good, I think. Or was that Fernando Lamas?"
Those three designers mentioned above would be proud.
What started as a victorious anthem by Freddie Mercury has, 25 years later, become the beginning of a revolution.
We are the champions, indeed.
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Outsports.com
co-founder Cyd Zeigler is also the Sports Editor for Genre
Magazine. His "Jocks" stories appear there
monthly.
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