A Look at the
Stories and Pictures That Caught Our Eye
As 2005 heads for the history books we thought you’d like one
last look at the year’s top sports stories from a gay
perspective, and ones that were just plain entertaining
or strange. All items were written by Jim Allen, Jim Buzinski or Cyd Zeigler Jr.
Picture This: We also selected our favorite photo
links. Scroll at the end of each month's stories and
click on the links.
January
Homophobe Hingis
In 1999, out lesbian tennis star Amelie Mauresmo was beaten by former No.
1 Martina Hingis at the Australian Open and afterwards
Hingis said that Mauresmo was "half a man." She's all woman
to us, but in any case, Hingis has been on the shelf since
retiring due to injuries in 2002. She recently played a
match in Thailand and when Amelie was asked about it at a
press conference, Mauresmo was blunt: “I have nothing to
say, absolutely nothing at all". That wasn't good enough for
the questioner, who asked again, which prompted Mauresmo to
say "Nothing" and walk out of the press conference. We're
going to go out on a limb here and speculate that Amelie
Mauresmo hasn't forgiven or forgotten Hingis' remark.
Homophobia in the Darts World
All six members of a British pub dart team have been banned from league
play for life after they taunted a gay and lesbian team with
homophobic insults. The teams are based in Brighton,
England, and play in the Sussex United Darts League.
The ban came after the “straight” team
from the Bevendean Hotel allegedly mocked and scorned the
gay players from the Stag pub, according to British media
reports. The Bevendean team refused to shake their
opponents’ hands, eat their food (the game was at the Stag)
and repeatedly made anti-gay remarks.
The best account came from the London
Telegraph: Fran Bailey, the captain of the Stag's team,
insisted that her team had endured "constant abuse all
night", adding: "We heard them say, 'don't shake hands - you
never know what you're going to catch'. If their darts fell
on the floor, we heard them say, 'I wouldn't bend over to
pick up your darts in this pub. I would rather buy a new
pack.'
"It is courtesy to supply food when you
are the host pub for a match but when we said we were going
to bring it out they said, 'We don't want to eat in here
because we don't know what we are going to catch.' They even
booked their taxi well in advance and we heard them say that
they would rather pay waiting charges to the taxi than stay
another minute longer in the pub.
"We were intimidated in our own pub.
Their behavior was disgusting and offensive." A female Stag
player said her opponents taunted her in the toilet and
asked her if the was "in the right loo".
A Bevendean representative denied the
charges, saying, "I never heard any of my side make any
anti-gay comments. The lads in the side are placid and
certainly not homophobic. The only conclusion I can make is
that it is just sour grapes."
But the league thought otherwise.
Secretary Peter Crook said, "We cannot tolerate homophobic
behavior of any kind." We’ll drink a pint to that!
Piazza to Wed Playmate
New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza, who publicly declared in 2002 he was a
heterosexual, will reportedly marry ... a man in Canada. No,
just kidding! Piazza will wed "Baywatch" actress and former
Playmate Alicia Rickter in late January, the New York Post
reported.
Piazza, the subject of a 2002 blind item
in Post that he was gay, took the unusual step of holding a
press conference at the time and stating, "The truth is that
I'm heterosexual and date women." At the time, another
Playmate that Piazza was dating, Darlene Bernaola, said,
"Our sex life was very, very healthy."
Of course, this will put an end to those
nasty rumors. It is interesting, though, that having very
public relationships with Playmates is the way for jocks to
prove they are straight. NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia, who
also has
denied rumors he is gay, made news when his
girlfriend Carmella DeCesare, the 2004 Playboy Playmate of
the Year, allegedly karate kicked another woman that Garcia
had dated during a tussle at a Cleveland nightclub.
Sex and the Mascot
Ever want to have sex with a school mascot? Us, either. But apparently
some people find the idea alluring, according to
an entertaining reportin the London Guardian.
"There's a whole sports mascot sort of
groupie thing that goes on ... sports mascots get laid like
crazy because people are so attracted to them,” Minnesota
sexologist Ducky Doolittle (her real name) says. “Women are
all over them."
"For some reason, girls think we're
immature," Pete Nelson, aka T-Rac, the giant racoon mascot
of the Tennessee Titans told the paper. "They think we're
funny to begin with, but they get tired of us after a
while." Gee, we wonder why.
We did find a gay angle in all of this,
a story we happened to miss at the time. As the Guardian
wrote: "In 2002 Goldy Gopher, mascot of the University of
Minnesota's various sports teams, 'came out' as part of the
college's attempt to show solidarity with its gay and
lesbian students. Cue hoo-ha. In the face of mounting public
pressure, Goldy was officially reclassified as being both
genderless and asexual. But even this sordid compromise
failed to satisfy the slavering homophobes.
So soon Goldy was seen in an ESPN TV
sting chasing women in bikinis. And this was promptly
followed by an interview in Playboy in which the formerly
homosexual rodent drooled about opposing teams' (female)
cheerleaders. There is, it seems, only one sort of sexuality
allowed in mascot land. And that is male heterosexuality."
Once we get equal rights in the mascot
world, then we all can rest easy.
We love this quote, from ESPN.com: “Just picture your favorite guy and
put it right through the hole." – San Diego Chargers
quarterback Drew Brees after winning the skills competition
at the NFL Pro Bowl.
Transgender Golfer Makes Tour Debut
Mianne Bagger is blazing a trail in the women's golf game that hopefully
will become unremarked upon over time. She was born a male
in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1966 and started playing golf at
the age of 8. At the age of 26, she withdrew from
competitive golf to undergo gender reassignment surgery,
starting to play again in 1998. Bagger now lives in
Australia and this week made her debut on the Ladies
European Tour (which, naturally, was being played in
Australia). It's believed to be the first time a known
transgender person has played a women's professional golf
tournament. There's been the expected whispers that Mianne
did this so that she can have an advantage over women
golfers but she reacted to this by saying "That always
infuriated me so much, to say 'What's to stop some guy from
having a sex-change operation to play the women's tour'? It
really exhibits the level of ignorance that exists." Of
course, what will ultimately matter is whether Mianne Bagger
can play golf at a level that will permit her to make the
cut with regularity.
Urine Prank Gets Suspension
From the “Some Things You Just Can’t Make Up File:” A dozen swimmers from
a high school in Michigan were suspended from the team for
the rest of the season for pulling a prank on their coach,
Channel 6 in Warren reports. The swimmers from Warren Mott
High School drove to their coaches' house Sunday from a
Super Bowl party and placed a bottle of Gatorade filled with
urine on her front porch.
The prank was a tradition where the team
member who worked the hardest during the previous meet is
presented with a bottle of Gatorade as the "Thirst-Quencher
Award," according to the report.
The bottle was left with an
"unmistakable" note so the coach would know who left the
bottle, said parent David Czapp.
The students say they were sorry, but
the story never says if the coach imbibed.
Bizarre
One of the strangest sports stories we've seen has been playing out in
Zimbabwe. Samukaliso Sithole--no, we didn't forget to type
in another "h" in the last name--won some track events at a
meet in Botswana last year. However, prosecutors have filed
charges in Zimbabwe that Sithole misled a woman as to his
gender. The woman believed that Sithole was a woman but he
was outed as a man by a third party. Upon his outing,
Sithole tried to flee, but the police caught him and a
medical exam was undertaken. Sithole's explanation? He was
born congenitally deformed, he claims, and although he went
to a tribal healer who proclaimed him a female, the ritual
wasn't completed because Sithole couldn't make full payments
to the healer.
The The Zimbabwe Athletics Association
has said that Samukaliso Sithole could be stripped of all
medals and prize money. This wouldn't be the first time that
a man competing as a woman was found out. Stella Walsh won
the 1932 Olympic women's 100 metres, but upon the death of
Walsh in 1980, it was discovered that she was really a man.
It is not unknown in the medical field that a newborn's
gender is unclear and a decision has to be made on which
gender the child will be raised as. This might be one of
those cases but we suspect that Samukaliso Sithole will end
up being the Zimbabwean Stella Walsh.
Yogi Sues
Yogi Berra is 79 and one would think he’d be flattered to be mentioned in
the same sentence as “sex.” But no. The New York Yankees
legend has filed a $10 million lawsuit against Turner
Broadcasting Systems for using his name in an ad for “Sex
and the City” he calls hurtful.” The suit said the ad
"created a false image of [Berra] that is both contrary to
his personality, lifestyle and character as well as
abhorrent to him personally."
The ad depicts the show’s sex kitten
Samantha and the words: "Yogasm: a) a type of yo-yo trick b)
sex with Yogi Berra c) what Samantha has with a guy from
yoga class."
The league
reversed itself and
will now allow personalized jerseys to have “GAY” on
the back. This decision came one day after Outsports printed
an article about the policy (see below). Previously, a
person trying to buy such a jersey had it rejected with the
words: "This field should not contain a naughty word." (this
wording was changed in response to our story to "The
personalization entered cannot be accepted.").
Dan
Masonson, a league spokesman, told Outsports that “there was
no message there” to having “gay” on a
list of 1,159 banned words. After being made aware
of the issue, the
NFL Shop will now allow “gay” jerseys, said Masonson.
“It should have not been in the [naughty words] filter,” he
said.
Openly gay Dartmouth lacrosse goalie Andrew Goldstein has been named
College Sports Television Student-Athlete of the Week for
his stellar effort in goal against Maryland last Tuesday,
leading his team to victory, 7-6. Last fall, Goldstein wrote
a first-person column for Outsports about being openly
gay and just one of the guys on his team.
It was the first time that Dartmouth
(3-1) beat #4 Maryland in eight tries. In the schools'
previous meetings, Maryland had won by an average of 10
points. Goldstein had a phenomenal .684 save percentage in
the game and stopped two shots on goal in the final 45
seconds to seal the victory.
The preseason All-America is recognized
as one of the best goalies in the nation. He's a senior
majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and was named
second-team All-Ivy last season. You can track some of his
games live on
Collegesports.com
No Queer
Eye for This Red Sox Guy
Boston Red Sox
pitcher Mike
Timlin said he would not have
participated in a "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" makeover
that some of his teammates did in spring training.
"I don't believe in how some
people live,'' Timlin told the Hartford Courant. "`When it
comes time and you're standing in front of God, you have to
face judgment for what you do. Now if you're doing something
wrong, it is my responsibility as a Christian and a human
being to try to guide you away from doing something wrong.
All I can do is try to guide you. I can't lead you.''
If by "doing something
wrong," Timlin meant someone wearing wearing a check shirt
with striped pants, we agreed they should incur the wrath of
the Almighty. But we suspect Timlin is just another
homophobe who masks his prejudice with his religion. (In the
same article, teammate Trot Nixon stressed he wasn't
criticizing his teammates for receiving makeovers. It just
wasn't something he would be interested in because of his
Christian beliefs.)
Coach Licks Players – Literally
An Oregon high school football coach has a new remedy for open wounds:
have your coach lick them. While this may be the fantasy of
some, it was the horror of the parents of one player whose
cut knee was licked by the boy's coach.
Central Linn High coach Scott Reed has
admitted to the incident. According to the Associated Press,
police investigated but Reed was not arrested - no law
exists in Oregon against licking someone's open wounds. Reed
maintains it was consensual - no reports have disputed that
fact.
Reed has been put on probation by the
school and ordered to take a "bloodborne pathogens" course.
Legal or not, it's pretty wild behavior.
We can only imagine what signs will be held high by the fans
of opposing teams next football season: "Neverland Ranch"
comes to mind.
That is, if any parents let their kids
play for this guy again. Though he hasn't had any facial
surgery, this is as bizarre as anything Michael Jackson has
ever done (naming his baby "blanket" excluded).
Bonds: My Testicles Haven't
Shrunk
We can't really think of anything snarky to say about these two Barry
Bonds comments regarding his alleged steroid use, so we'll
just cut and paste 'em and look on in amazement at what a
detour in to farce the major league baseball steroids
scandal has taken (Note: steroids are supposed to cause a
head to grow and testicles to shrink):
"What's all this about my head size? My
hat size is the same today as when I started. My head hasn't
grown. I've always been a 7 1/4 to a 7 3/8 my whole career.
You can go check".
"I can tell you my testicles are the
same size. They haven't shrunk. They're the same and work
just the same as they always have."
One of the stereotypes that drives women athletes nuts, no matter their
orientation, is that all female jocks are lesbians. Not
true, of course, as this heartwarming story of family values
on the women’s pro golf tour demonstrates. A former male
caddie for Jackie Gallagher-Smith filed a lawsuit claiming
that she had seduced him, with the sole motivation of
getting pregnant. It seems that the married Gallagher-Smith
claimed that she was having trouble conceiving with her
husband and that the former caddie, Gary Robinson, was
drafted to help the process along. So, if someone claims
that "all women golfers are lesbians", remind them of this
story.
Out Aussie Gymnast
Trampoline is not a high-profile sport, but we applaud any jock that has
the guts to come out. We received this from a reader in
Australia:
On Australian TV this week they ran a
brief article on the official coming out of 28 year old
World Champion gymnast Ji Wallace. Ji said being gay was a
condition that sat naturally with him and he was very happy
to tell the world about it. Ji said that being honest can
make you attractive - and he's particularly hoping to
attract a friendly sponsor so he can suitably prepare for
the 2006 Olympics in Bejing.
Ji has been competing for Australia
since he was 15 (1992) and won the silver medal at the
Sydney 2000 Olympics in the discipline of Trampoline. In
1996 he was World Champion in Double Mini Tramp (DMT). He
has consistently figured among the best athletes in his
field in the world.
Man of
Hate
Ex-Seattle
Seahawks linebacker Ken Hutcherson is an influential
evangelical minister in Seattle and stopping same-sex
marriage and gay rights is his primary agenda. He calls
same-sex marriage "the greatest danger to America." In 2004,
he held a "Mayday for Marriage" rally that drew 20,000 in
Seattle. Months later, he led a similar rally in Washington,
D.C., that drew 100,000.
In April, Hutcherson met
privately with a Microsoft official and
threatened a boycott of its products if it did not
rescind its support for a gay rights measure before the
Washington Senate. Coincidence or not, Microsoft, which had
supported the measure, decided to stay neutral and the bill
lost by 1 vote. "If I got God on my side, what's a
Microsoft? What's a Microsoft? It's nothing," Hutcherson
told the New York Times. "I kick 'em out," he said if he
discovers a parishioner is gay. "I do it three or four times
a year. You bring up their names during the church service,
and if they won't repent, won't turn away from sin, you have
to kick 'em out."
Locker Room Surprise
The last time we saw French tennis player Michael Llorda it was on TV at
the Australian Open, where he was changing between sets
(pictured right),revealing a lean, tight body
and leaving little to the imagination. So this following
story is probably not a surprise: Two weeks ago, at the
Nasdaq-100 in Miami, Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic opened his
locker and found a naked Llorda awaiting him. Thanks to the
BBC, which provided this
blow-by-blowdescription:
Ljubicic: "I saw the door slightly open,
so I went to open it and then, shock, complete shock--there
was Michael Llodra, naked in my locker! "He was looking at me, I was looking at
him. I said, 'What the hell are you doing here?' "He said: 'I'm trying to focus for my
match.' "I said: 'It's 10 to 10--you're playing
at 10 o'clock!' "He replied: 'I'm trying to get positive
energy from you. You're winning a lot of matches this
year'."
Ljubicic went on to win his match that
day, and he obviously gave Llorda enough energy that he won
his doubles match.
Llorda stands 6'3" and Ljubicic was
impressed that he fit in the locker. "The locker, it's not a
big locker, it's a small locker. It's not easy to get in
that locker, I'm telling you," said Ljubicic.
"He is not a small guy but very
flexible. Very, very flexible."
How come this never happens to us when
we hit the lockers?
A.I. Wants to Make Out With His Coach
Oft-maligned 76er Allen Iverson finally got the head coach he wanted:
former Sixer star and assistant coach Maurice Cheeks. In
fact, "The Answer" was so happy with the selection of Cheeks
that he wanted to get a little jiggy with him.
"Bringing in Mo was icing on the cake,"
Iverson said at a press conference Tuesday. "I didn't want
to do it in front of all the cameras, but I wanted to take
him in the back and kiss him on the mouth."
An odd comment from Iverson, who is
still remembered for making some nasty comments about gay
people on an album that was never released a couple years
ago. I guess that "City of Brotherly Love" thing is getting
to him.
High School Gay Football Play Draws Fire
It's amazing what a little one-act play can stir up in high school.
Sabrina Audrey Jess, a high school student in Ashburn, Va.,
has had quite a couple of months since her plays, "Offsides,"
about a high school football player who comes out of the
closet, was produced at Stone Bridge High in February.
"I had a lot of senior friends last year
who went through a really hard time," Jess told the
Washington Post. "Some of them didn't tell anybody because
of how scared they were. There were some who told people,
and their parents said they were going to get kicked out of
their house, or they had to go to counseling, and if they
didn't go to counseling they would be forced to leave the
house -- it was just a lot of stuff. And it didn't make
sense to me."
So Jess wrote the play. According to the
Washington Post, after it was performed, parents approached
the county school board about keeping the play from being
performed again and began to distribute leaflets in protest
of the play.
"I try to promote tolerance in a school
where there is not enough among teenagers and am in turn
flooded with the intolerance of their parents," Jess told
the Post. "People who are negatively commenting on my play
are proving my point."
While many parents in Ashburn are
freaking out, Jess is becoming quite the little celebrity.
According to the Post, she has been honored by the Human
Rights Campaign and PFLAG for her work.
It's just amazing how strong kids are
today. Some people may look at that as a bad thing - that
they are unnecessarily defiant. Sometimes, maybe that's
true. But, that defiance also has really positive outcomes -
like this one. With any luck, more towns like Ashburn will
start putting on more plays like "Offsides," and more high
school quarterbacks, point guards and goalies will feel just
a little more comfortable with their feelings about other
men.
In next week's Newsweek, Red Sox slugger Johnny Damon has a positive
perspective on a gay teammate: "If someone came out on the
baseball field, I don't think it would be a big deal...If I
had a gay teammate, I'm sure we'd keep slapping each other
on the butt."
If only more athletes had the
self-confidence Damon obviously has, we could probably find
a few hundred thousand volunteers.
Beck's Beauty Tips:
Soccer star and Posh-Spice-hubby David Beckham has revealed his deepest,
darkets beauty tips after People magazine named him the
world's most beautiful sports icon.
"I've learned a lot. Being out in the
cold and rain doesn't help your skin, so moisturiser in the
morning is a big thing. And at night it's the eye cream. A
manicure is probably my favourite pampering splurge."
Beckham also told the mag that his wife,
former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, is a big fan of his firm
butt, but that his feet leave much to be desired. Time for a
pedicure, I guess.
ESPN’s Does Gay Story
ESPN on its Sunday SportsCenter ran an eight-minute segment on Andrew
Goldstein, the All-American Dartmouth lacrosse goalie who
came out to his team after the 2003 season.
Reported by Greg Garber, the segment was
moving as it told of Goldstein’s journey of acceptance of
himself and of his teammates’ acceptance of him. While I
could have done with less of the syrupy soft piano music,
the piece was effective in conveying what gay athletes face.
The coolest part was footage of
Goldstein scoring a goal against Syracuse in the 2003 NCAA
playoffs, the first by a goalie in tournament play in 30
years. His teammates remarked that the feat marked Goldstein
as a different kind of player, something they soon
discovered was more true than they had ever realized. Hats
off to ESPN for airing the segment but especially to
Goldstein for sharing his story. He proved that a jock can
come out in a team sport in a positive fashion.
Relief pitchers for the Seattle Mariners were chagrined to discover that
the bullpen at San Diego’s Petco Park does not have a
bathroom. This forced Matt Thornton on Friday to climb a
fence and use a public restroom, the Seattle Times reported.
Thornton was forced to wait in line with the fans, which set
up at least one interesting encounter.
"I met a guy named Stan, who invented a
baseball cap with a handle so you can take it off fast to
catch foul balls," Thornton said. "He said he tested it at a
batting cage on pitches at 75 mph and caught five before the
seams started to give out."
We’re not sure if the Padres
deliberately omitted a restroom in the bullpen so as to
possibly have an opposing pitcher trapped in the public
bathroom during a crucial stretch of the game. Gives a new
meaning to “reliever.”
Safe Sex
The German city of Dortmund is installing a series of wooden "sex
garages" in time for next year's soccer World Cup to meet an
expected demand in prostitution, Reuters reports. "The World
Cup has put us under added time pressure, as we don't want a
situation where prostitutes and their clients disturb
residential areas," an official said. Germany allows
prostitution in certain areas.
Reuters says an estimated 40,000 hookers
are expected to descend on Germany for next summer's World
Cup. Dortmund plans to arrange the Dutch-designed wooden
huts in an area with condom machines and snack bar.
"Men have to get used to them of course,
but a high percentage accept them because they can protect
their anonymity," the official said. "That said, there will
always be those who want to go behind a bush, under a bridge
or into the woods."
I always love the rather practical
approach most of Europe takes to things like this. I
especially like the snack bar idea; it reminds me of the
"Seinfeld" episode where George took food to bed with his
girlfriend during sex and Jerry dubbed him the "Fornicating
Gourmet."
Homophobic Coach Out
We admit to a bit of schaudenfreud upon hearing that the University of
Florida decided not to renew the contract of women’s
softball coach Karen Johns. It was Johns who kicked senior
Andrea Zimbardioff the team in 2003 after
learning she was a lesbian. Zimbardi had alleged that Johns
created an atmosphere of alienation for anyone not sharing
her Christian beliefs, outed other coaches and players as
lesbians, and reneged on an agreement not to retaliate
against Zimbardi when she took her concerns to the
university’s athletic administration.
Zimbardi fought her dismissal and the
result was that the University of Florida agreed to provide
diversity training dealing with homophobia to all its
coaches, athletic directors and staff. It was too late to
save Zimbardi’s career, but not too late to help set a
precedent.
Johns was fired after her Gators were
eliminated from the NCAA tournament in May. Her teams went
192-131 overall but were only 3-10 in the Southeast
Conference tournament and won only three NCAA tourney games.
She also had a lot of turnover on her staff. Athletic
Director Jeremy Foley said, “It became evident that this
program was not achieving the success that we envisioned.”
We suspect that the Zimbardi incident
also played a role. The university received a lot of
negative press about Johns’ behavior and I wonder whether it
affected recruiting. I’m not naïve to think that Johns would
have been fired if she had more on-field success, but by
making the atmosphere of homophobia public, Zimbardi cast an
unwelcome light on the high-profile university where image
is important.
Diversity
Training Video Backfires
In trying
to teach incoming players how to handle the media and be
sensitive to diversity, people in the San Francisco 49ers
front office created a “training video” that featured an
overtly stereotypical Chinese man, two lesbians stripping
and making out before getting married, and the “alleged”
mayor of San Francisco (played by now-former Niners PR man
Kirk Reynolds) accepting bribes, swearing at constituents
and getting naked with three hot, topless women. Reynolds
was fired and the 49ers apologized.
‘I Don’t Believe in Being Gay’
Chicago White Sox player Carl Everett doesn’t believe in dinosaurs
(they’re not in the Bible) and he doesn’t believe in gays.
"Gays being gay is wrong. Two women
can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's
not how it's supposed to be. . . . I don't believe in gay
marriages. I don't believe in being gay," Everett told Maxim
magazine, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Everett made these comments despite
telling the Tribune that he had gay teammates whom he
accepted. Evertt also told Maxim that “It's proven that 99
percent of baseball fans have no idea what they're
watching;" and that “If everybody in the world got on
steroids, we'll still lose more kids to a war than we will
from steroids."
My first instinct is to rip Everett but
that is modified if in fact he had gay teammates and was
accepting. Make no mistake: What he said was offensive and
unacceptable. Words can be powerful but actions often speak
louder. I would like to know more about this before totally
condemning him. His ravings about gays and marriage and
babies seem more formed from religious ignorance than
hatred. He has a reputation for being, as someone said, 51
cards shy of a full deck.
Queer Eye for the Red Sox Guy
In another sign that we have turned some sort of cultural corner,
Tuesday’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” had its season
premier with its much-ballyhooed makeover of Boston Red Sox
players Johnny Damon, Jason Varitek, Kevin Millar, Tim
Wakefield, and Doug Mirabelli. For an hour viewers heard the
word “gay” said comfortably in the context of sports, along
with paraffin waxing, manicures, pumpkin facials and micro-dermabrasion.
The segment began with an intro by
sportscaster Bob Costas, another sign “Queer Eye” is firmly
accepted in the mainstream. The Red Sox players, shown
almost all the time in the presence of their wives, had no
problem primping and preening as they got their makeovers.
“Who said gay was bad?” Millar asked, clad in a fluffy
cotton robe and soaking his feet in water mixed with rose
petals. “I am now gay.” After Varitek arrived by helicopter
for his treatment, one “Queer Eye” member quipped, “You flew
all the way in a helicopter to get your back waxed—that is
gay.”
Along with the makeover (which took up
much less of the show than most episodes) was a feel-good
story about helping a Florida Little League rebuild its
stadium that was badly damaged in last year’s hurricanes.
This part was cloying (of course) and allowed an easy way
for the gays and jocks to come together.
In a
terrific columnabout the episode and gays and
sports in general, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Gwen
Knapp quotes Damon saying, "If there's a gay guy in
baseball, we have to help him out. I'd smack him on the
butt, just like I do everybody else.'' It will be attitudes
like Damon’s (a star whose jock credentials can’t be
questioned) that will go a long way with helping gays being
accepted in sports; that and a pumpkin facial.
Well, no, not really; we’d all be dead because the Earth would have
already spun off its axis if someone did, obviously.
However, Cyd briefly mentioning Queer as Folk below
reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write about.
I love Queer as Folk (QaF
hereafter). I fully admit it: the US version, for long
stretches of its five year run, has sucked more than any
television show has a right to suck. Awful writing, hideous
directors, bad acting, an almost total lack of queer people
of color as anything other than sex objects, Toronto
doubling as Pittsburgh, the works. However, something
happened at the end of season four: the show became
consistently alright. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but
around the same time, the show introduced a closeted
football player named Drew Boyd, played by
Matt Battaglia. Drew plays quarterback for a fictional
team that I think is an Arena League team (definitely not
the Steelers). Drew hooked up with series regular Emmett
Honeycutt (the wonderful Peter Paige) for anonymous sex, but
ran off when Emmett pushed him to come out publicly after
finding out who he was.
Now, when QaF has tried to be "relevant"
and "topical" and "controversial" in the past, that’s where
a lot of the suckage has come in; the writers have the
subtlety of a train wreck usually. Lo and behold, however,
they’ve handled the Drew Boyd coming out story pretty well.
Earlier this season, Drew reappeared and told Emmett that he
was being blackmailed about being gay but wanted to be with
him, he was tired of the closet. A few episodes ago, Drew
came out to the public and it actually showed what I suspect
will actually happen when an active pro athlete finally does
the same in about 2819: the media frenzy, the "Ohmygawd,
that guy I cheer is a fag?!?!" from redneck fans, the
clueless-about-sports gay boys going nuts over something
they really don’t understand, the angst of the athlete about
endorsements, his new role in society and his safety.
In the bad old days of QaF, Drew would
have come roaring out of the closet sounding like a fully
formed gay activist, spouting the latest queer talking
points; but they show his doubts, his fears, his
apprehension about his place in the gay community and best
of all, don’t chide the character for that. While I’m
utterly cynical about the possibility of an active team
sport pro athlete coming out without being arrested in Fire
Island Pines and having it splashed all over the tabloids,
QaF, in its own gawky way, shows a bit of the human side of
that potential story. Queer as Folk is ending after
this season and I hope that in the Final Episode Ever Emmett
and Drew end up together, madly in love. Now if they could
only make the few football scenes they’ve shown more
realistic. --Jim Allen
Martina Settles With Sponsor
Martina Navratilova has settled her lawsuit against Rainbow Card, the
gay-targeted credit card for which Navratilova was a
spokesperson from 1995 to 2004.
The lesbian champion tennis player had
withdrawn her support for Rainbow Card when the company
began associating with gay-themed TV shows "The L Word" and
"Queer As Folk," which Navratilova has allegedly called
"depraved."
It had always seemed like a strange
tiff. My vision had been Martina jumping up and down,
stomping her feet and screaming about a relationship that
had apparently brought her a paycheck for 10 waning years of
her career. For both parties, I'm glad it's over and that
they can move on. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Hewitt Calls Ref a "Poof"
The world's No. 2 tennis player, Lleyton Hewitt, had some apologizing to
do on Tuesday after calling an official a "poof" during a
Davis Cup match against Argentina's Guillermo Coria. Calling
someone a "poof" is like calling someone a "fag."
"Numerous times he said, 'Allez, come
on', the whole day as well. He grabbed his private parts at
one stage, three times in a row, and I'm about to serve and
I asked him if he had an issue - or if he could find it [his
penis]," Coria told the Associated Press following the
match.
Hewitt at first denied making the "poof"
comment, but videotape has shown otherwise. On Tuesday,
Hewitt apologized for his comments.
"I regret having said what I said in the
heat of the match," Hewitt said. "I apologize for any
offense I may have caused to any individual or groups."
In other words: "My manager says I
should just apologize, so here's the weakest apology I can
make."
To me, this comment doesn't sting as
much as those of so many others. A big part of that is
probably because the word "poof" just doesn't mean what it
does to so many overseas. Still, I think it's good that the
International Tennis Federation has fined Hewitt for his
off-color remarks to the official. Hopefully he actually
learned a lesson from this, other than that it's a smart
thing to apologize, whether you mean it or not. -Cyd
Zeigler jr.
Gay Ruggers on TV
The documentary
“Go Dragons,”airing on the new gay cable channel
Logo, is an entertaining look at the Chicago Dragons gay
rugby team and their quest to win their first game. The
documentary examines how the team was formed and the
motivations for the various players. The team, which
competes in a mainstream league, is very green and raw, with
only a handful of guys who have played before. Nevertheless,
they give it the old college try and win a measure of
self-respect.
The best segments involve the team
playing in rural Illinois against teams who have “redneck”
written all over them. Yet, we hear several expressions of
tolerance and acceptance from the opposing players, who seem
to care less that their opponents are gay. This is evidenced
by a post-game party featuring lots of beer and some nudity
(following a rugby tradition of some sort).
The Dragons comes across as a mostly
likeable bunch, though there is a jarring meanness as some
of the players diss the looks of players from the Atlanta
Bucks, a gay club that has invited the Dragons down to
Hotlanta for a match. One Atlanta player is especially
singled out for ridicule and one hopes he never sees the
documentary; this left a bad taste in my mouth.
There is also an off-putting scene where
the Dragons express shock at losing to the Bucks. They can
accept being whipped by straight guys but losing to another
bunch of gay guys seems to really bug them. During the
team’s halftime speech, two Dragons refer to the Bucks as
“pussies.” It had me rooting for the Bucks.
It’s a shame that some of the Dragons
buy into the myth that gay jocks are somehow less than and
use the same language to belittle their opponents that
straight guys have used forever. I would have thought a gay
team was beyond that. The Dragons were unsuccessful on the
field not because they are gay but because they aren’t yet
very good; I would assume success will come as the team
matures both in its abilities and attitudes. --Jim
Buzinski
Ozzie Guillen, the Chicago White
Sox manager known for shooting from the hip, had just
finished an interview at Yankee Stadium with a pack of
reporters, when he saw a longtime friend and called out:
"Hey, everybody, this guy's a homosexual! He's a child
molester!"
Reporters said the man seemed to not take offense, and that
both men hugged. Two days later, Guillen
explained himself to Rick Morrissey of the Chicago
Tribune: "I have no problem with
[homosexuals]. I don't deal with that. To me, everybody's
the same. We're human beings created by God. Everybody has
their own opinion and their own right to do what they want
to do. You have the right to feel the way you want to feel.
Nobody can take that away from you."
In addition,
according to Dave Buscema, a columnist with the
Times-Herald Record in New York, Guillen had "just
about an hour before, around a group of female Japanese
reporters ... called outfielder Tadahito Iguchi 'queer,'
jokingly saying he should want to go out with one of them."
We would like to think
Guillen meant no offense and he did said he needs to be
careful with his words. But equating gay people to child
molesters is one of the biggest slurs homophobes have faced
and Guillen is at least guilty of gross insensitivity. And
his comment about Iguchi being "queer" is also offensive and
adds to the sense that Guillen thinks making fun of gay
people is humorous and acceptable.
How ironic that just minutes
before he made his child molester comments, Guillen
expressed offense at remarks by a San Francisco radio host
who insulted the intelligence of Latin players. Guillen, who
is from Venezuela, said about the anti-Latin remarks: "It's
ignorant. It's just ignorant. You have someone dealing with
the media, dealing with people, to say something like that,
that's ignorant, man."
Gay Day Protest
The festive atmosphere of Gay Community Night at the
Philadelphia Phillies was interrupted when two men unfurled
-- with permission of the team -- a banner covering a row of
eight seats in the high right-field stands that read,
“Homosexuality is Sin. Christ Can Set You Free.”
Sparks Owner on Firing a Lesbian
The Los Angeles Sparks are embroiled in a controversy about the release
of a lesbian player, and Sparks owner Johnny Buss is talking
about it.
Latasha Byears was an important part of
the Sparks' championship runs, playing a powerful power
forward. In 2003, she was accused of sexual assault and was
quickly released byt the team; she hasn't been picked up by
anyone else since. It was around that same time that the
Lakers' Kobe Bryant was accused of the same thing: sexually
assaulting a woman. Not only was he not released, but he was
vocally supported by his team. The Lakers are owned by
Johnny Buss' brother, Jerry.
In an interview with the Los Angeles
Times, Buss said that gay issues are a topic of discussion
at the team and league levels, and that he knows there are
gay players in the League.
"We've discussed homosexuality in the
NBA and WNBA," Buss told the L.A. Times. "We don't ask. If
you look at the general population, you could come up with
statistics on who is homosexual and who is not. I don't know
why that would be any different in professional sports. Now
it's one of those things that people won't come out and
disclose. I think they should. I know there's a lot of
prejudice in America and it's sickening to me."
He said that Byears' being lesbian
didn't influence the decision to fire her. "What I have
learned over all the years, you're just better off being
blind to certain lifestyles," he said.
It certainly seems strange that the
Lakers would vocally support Bryant at the same time the
Sparks cut Byears, when both were accused of the same thing.
It's no secret that gays and lesbians are treated
differently by society, and by sports. I just wish the
powers that be, like Johnny Buss, would either start
treating us the same way; or at least have some balls and
come clean about it. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
David Carr Is Cute:
Houston Texans quarterback David Carr came to training camp with a new
haircut, after letting his locks grow long last season.
See before and after photos.Guard Zach Wiegert
told Carr he looked like a "European supermodel," according
to the Houston Chronicle.
Center Steve McKinney seemed to upset
his quarterback when he called him cute. “I said he looked
cute," McKinney said. "He didn't like that comment, so I
said, 'Let me rephrase it: You look handsome.' " Carr also
didn’t like that, and told the Chronicle: "I told him I'd
slap him if he said that again." Oooh, how butch! McKinney
wouldn’t give it up, saying: "He's just real sensitive about
the way he looks. If somebody told me I was cute, I'd take
it as a compliment."
Carr, who goes out of his way to praise
the Lord and mention his wife in almost every interview I’ve
seen of him, fingered the latter for his new look. "My wife
(Melody) wanted me to cut it," said Carr. "It's kind of what
I've had my whole life, so I'm used to it. I feel like I've
lost 10 pounds."
Thai Boxer Sentenced for Porn
Sirimongkol Singwancha, a leading Thai boxer, has been fined and
sentenced to jail for allowing pornographic pictures of
himself to appear in the gay-targeted Thai magazine Heat.
(Picture here.)Sirimongkol was reportedly fined
the equivalent of about $4,800; according to Gay.com, the
fine was reduced to about $100, and his jail sentence of six
months has been suspended for at least two years, because he
has cooperated with authorities.
According to Queer Day, Sirimongkol said
the pictures were originally taken "for fun and for them to
view in privacy. I regret (it) and I'd like to apologize to
everyone. I'm very stressed now and sometimes losing sleep.
I hope that I would be forgiven for what I had done."
The photos appeared in the magazine two
years ago. But, the magazine issue was just discovered by
police when they raided a newsstand in Northern Bangkok. The
photos were full-frontal images with several featuring his
erect penis. Apparently, this is all a part of Thailand's
crackdown on the porn industry. The pics are now making
their way around the Internet - shocker.
Why can't some of the top athletes in
the U.S. decide to take some nude pictures and accidentally
leak them to gay magazines? I mean, surely Andy Roddick or
some fourth-string NFL receiver could use some extra cash.
-Cyd Zeigler jr.
Private Parts “Fried in Butter”
This qualifies as the most bizarre sports story of the year. The
Australia Wallabies rugby team, as part of a male bonding
exercise on a trip to South Africa, graphically detailed
which of their teammates they would most like to eat.
For example, Stephen Larkham wanted Drew
Mitchell's testicles for dessert, while Chris Whitaker
preferred Rocky Elsom's private parts "fried in butter,
garlic, chilli and parsley." The story came out after the
players left questionnaires with their eating preferences in
a restaurant, which then gave it to the Cape Times. Team
management gave the players the question: "The Alive
Scenario - Who to Cook?" during a gathering at a local Cape
Town bar, asking them who should be "sacrificed in the name
of culinary delights." The players were instructed: "You
must nominate a player for each dish and how you would
prepare them. Ways to present them include on a spit,
marinated, skewered, boiled, in dumplings, etc. Be creative,
but it is your view only. No comparing notes."
It was based on the true story of the
1972 rugby team in Uruguay whose plane crashed in the Andes,
forcing survivors to resort to cannibalism.
Wallaby Matt Dunning,
who looks likehe could feed the entire team with
his 253 pounds, was especially popular. Lote Tuqiri
reportedly wanted to prepare him for starters in a sweet and
sour sauce, while George Gregan said Dunning would be part
of his main dish of "sweet pork, slowly roasted,” the Sydney
Morning Herald said. Tuqiri was also fond of Morgan Turinui
for dessert, explaining: "The amount of sweets he puts in,
it's got to rub off in his meat somewhere." This prompted
Rugby Heaven to call the dish “Morgan Tiramisu.”
If I were playing the Wallabies, I would
get really nervous and start running if I heard them
bragging that they eat their opponents for lunch. This also
would allow ESPN to branch out with its new "Competitive
Eating" show. First up, the Oakland Raiders slow-roast
Warren Sapp.--Jim Buzinski
American pro sports have lagged behind the rest of the world in showing
us some skin. While rugby players across Europe are taking
off their clothes in calendars, American pro athletes seem
reticent to even show us a pec or two. Maybe the NHL, in its
desperation and with its Canadian and European influences,
is loosening the drawstrings.
Sidney Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins'
latest draftee right out of high school, certainly caught my
eye with his half-shirtless photo in October's Vanity Fair.
Let's hope we'll be seeing more of Crosby in the coming
months. Apparently, according to Crosby's agent, Pat Brisson,
the NHL has been contacting magazines about using Crosby in
photo spreads. I for one am glad Vanity Fair took them up on
their offer. Even if more don't, here's hoping
Crosby's Web site starts filling up that "photos"
section soon.
The Ottawa Citizen had an interesting
take on the photo and the NHL's initiative around Crosby:
"Crosby's beefcake shot is one more sign that the NHL is
trying to expand its appeal in the U.S., and among
Generation Y fans -- those between the ages of about 16 and
25, said Frank Pons, an assistant professor of sports
marketing and consumer behaviour at the University of San
Diego who studied hockey marketing as an MBA and PhD student
in Quebec City and Montreal."
What's interesting about it to me is
that it doesn't say they're trying to attract women with the
beefcake shot, but "Generation Y" - that age group that is
less and less heterocentric and more and more sexually
aware. It's that generation of young men who will look at a
picture of a hot guy and actually say, "wow, that guy's
hot." That the NHL is obviously acknowledging this is
promising. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Not-So-Pretty in Pink
"The pink locker room" sounds like a book about gay athletes. That's
exactly what the University of Iowa athletic department was
probably thinking when they painted the visitors' locker
room at Kinnick Stadium pink. Now, a professor is giving the
pink locker room the red light.
Erin Buzuvis has said that the pink
color scheme in the visitors' locker room promotes sexism
and homophobia, and she is planning to challenge whether the
color scheme violates NCAA policy. The pink locker room goes
back to the days of former Iowa coach Hayden Fry and has
been expanded in the current renovation of the stadium.
Everything is now pink, including the carpeting, metal
lockers, brick walls, sinks, shower floor and the urinals.
Now Buzuvis is claiming that she is
getting death and rape threats because she dares question
the legitimacy of painting a visitor's locker room pink. I'm
not remotely surprised.
Instead of painting the visitor's locker
room the same color as the Iowa team's locker room, I say
paint the Iowa locker room pink. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Black Cocks
Get your mind out of the gutter, this isn’t about African-American men’s
penises. For marketing reasons, the New Zealand national
badminton team—yes, badminton is another sport that’s huge
outside of U.S. borders—decided to call themselves the Black
Cocks (the shuttlecock is the thing they wack over the net
and the great New Zealand rugby team is the All Blacks) and
it worked, sort of. They got sponsorship from condom
companies and so forth, but this week, the national
governing body conceded that the nickname was just too
gimmicky, with too much potential for problems in less
sarcastic countries that they dropped the nickname. With
that decision goes a headline writers dream name; for
example, the article I saw this item in was entitled "New
Zealand finds Black Cocks hard to swallow". --Jim Allen
Shaq Chases Down Gay-Bashers:
Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal helped the police arrest a man
suspected of assaulting a gay couple over the weekend.
Shaq was driving around South Beach at 3
a.m. on Saturday when he noticed a man, Michael Gonzalez,
18, yell anti-gay slurs at the couple from a car. Gonzalez
then got out of the car and threw a bottle at the two men,
hitting one of them. Gonzalez then got back into the car. As
it sped off, O'Neal trailed behind, flagging down a police
officer who arrested the man.
O'Neal has long talked about how he
intends to become a police officer after his
basketball-playing days are over. In fact, he is in the
process of joining the Miami Beach police.
"For this incident I don't want to be
credited as an individual who does police work," O'Neal said
in a statement, according to the Associated Press. "I want
to be credited as a Miami Beach police officer."
I can only imagine that the alleged
attacker had a second thought about when he'd done when he
noticed he was being trailed by a 7-foot-1 brick house. -Cyd
Zeigler jr.
McGill University in Montreal is one of the most respected institutions
of higher learning in North America. Sadly, the university
is now in the midst of a shameful scandal that is repeated
in other places far too often. On Tuesday, the school
cancelled the football team’s season after a hazing incident
that involves one of the favorite tricks in that pathetic
ritual: sodomy or at least the threat of it. An 18-year old
freshman lodged a complaint about scumbags who were supposed
to be his teammates sexually assaulting him, using threats
and intimidation via use of a broomstick and "the use of
demeaning, stereotyped epithets" on Rookie Night in August.
Hmmmm….let’s take a wild guess what those might be.
This case reminds me of one from 2003
that involved Mepham High School on Long Island where three
players were raped – there’s no other word for it – during a
hazing at training camp in Pennsylvania. The story from
McGill indicates that no sodomy took place, only the threat
of it; the Mepham incident, however, was utterly vile, as
there was sodomy involving broomsticks, pinecones and golf
balls coated in Ben Gay. I hate rituals or situations that
involve humilation of indivuals in a mob setting and as long
as I draw a breath I’ll never, ever understand how shoving a
broomstick up someone’s butt while the rest of the team
stands around and cheers is supposed to make the victim feel
like more a part of the team. Scum, the lot of them, that do
those things.
Tagliabue,
Wife Honored for PFLAG Work
NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his wife,
Chandler,
were honored by the New York chapter of Parents,
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays with the PFLAG
2005 Stay Close Individual Leadership Award. Tagliabue had
given a sizable donation to PFLAG for the campaign.
Tagliabue's son, Drew, is openly gay.
Cheerleader Quits Over Gay Taunts
A male cheerleader at a high school in Colorado quit the squad after
being constantly teased about his sexuality, the Greeley
Tribune Reported (tip to
Towelroad).
Cole Graves, 17, who is also on the
wrestling team, said the last straw was a team picture on
the website of Platte Valley High School with “I’M GAY”
under two male cheerleaders. "It's been going on for three
or four months now," Graves told
the Tribune."Now it's posted on the picture on
the Internet." The school said it took down the picture
after being made aware of it and will investigate Graves’
charges.
Graves said he faced constant taunts and
that last week "after I got out of wrestling practice, four
guys were waiting on the corner to beat me up because they
said I was gay. I'm not gay."
Graves said the experience has given him
sympathy for others who are taunted. "I know I'm not gay,"
he said. "It's probably harder for a person who is gay and
has to be called names. I feel so sorry for them."
I certainly have sympathy for what
Graves went through and hope school officials get to the
bottom of it. But it was troubling (though not surprising
for a teen) for him to tell the
Denver Post:“Everybody called me a fag, but I'm
not gay. I'm just a regular guy.” We can hope he learns that
gay and regular aren’t mutually exclusive.--Jim Buzinski
Penn State Coach Is a Lesbian Hater
Penn State women’s basketball coach Rene Portland has always been one of
the nastiest homophobes in sports, vowing to never have
lesbians on her team. She is now being called on it by a
former player.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights
sent a letter on behalf of former Penn State basketball star
Jennifer Harris to University President Graham Spanier,
demanding that action be taken against Portland for her
“decades-long policy of harassing players whom Coach Harris
believed to be lesbians.” The complaint says that “despite
Harris’ outstanding performance as a player during her
two-year career at Penn State from 2003 to 2005, Coach
Portland repeatedly questioned Harris about her sexual
orientation, repeatedly threatened to kick Harris off the
team if she found out Harris was a lesbian, and eventually
told other players not to associate with Harris because she
believed that Harris was gay. In 2005, Coach Portland
abruptly told Harris to find somewhere else to play.”
“My departure from Penn State was very
painful,” said Harris. “I struggled with whether I should
just walk away and try to forget what happened. I finally
realized that I could never put this incident behind me as
long as other students were being subjected to the same sort
of humiliation and discrimination I experienced from Coach
Portland. In the end, I knew I had to speak out. Coach
Portland very nearly destroyed not only my athletic career,
but also my dream of completing my education and becoming a
doctor. I do not want to see a single other student damaged
in this way.” She is now enrolled James Madison University.
Harris' mother, Pearl Harris, told the
Daily Collegian campus paper that in spite of the alleged
harassment, her daughter is not a lesbian. “Because Coach
Portland thought that I was gay, I was treated in a very
demeaning manner,” said Jennifer Harris, even banning her
from the 2004-2005 team awards banquet.
Portland is notorious for publicly
stating in 1986 she would not have lesbians on her team ("I
will not have it in my program," Portland told the Chicago
Sun Times. "I bring it up and the kids are so relieved and
the parents are so relieved."), yet Penn State has never
disciplined her. A coach who said she did not want any Jews
or blacks on her team would be fired in a day. “It is
particularly troubling that such flagrant homophobia is
permitted to thrive at a school like Penn State, which has
such a strong public commitment to diversity, tolerance, and
eliminating hatred, violence, prejudice, and discrimination
from the University community,” said Helen Carroll, NCLR’s
Sports Coordinator. Later in the year, Harris filed suit
against Portland and Penn State.
Swoopes
Comes Out
Basketball star Sheryl Swoopes, a three-time Olympic gold
medalist and three-time MVP of the WNBA,
has come out publicly as a lesbian, making her the
highest-profile team sport athlete to come out while
playing.
Swoopes,
34, has been hired as a spokeswoman for Olivia Cruises,
which specializes in tour packages for lesbians. In
connection with this, she is doing an extensive round of
interviews with media outlets to talk about her decision to
come out.
Swoopes
told ESPN the magazine for their issue hitting newsstands
Wednesday that she is "tired of having to hide my feelings
about the person I care about."
Shippensburg University is a small little school in Pennsylvania.
Marquette is a small school in Wisconsin. But, their
lacrosse teams are making headlines - and turning heads -
for photos that are popping up all over the Web showing
hazing incidents involving g-strings and bongs.
Hazing has long been a tradition in uber-masculine
arenas of sports and fraternities. It's also been illegal
for quite some time. Now, both programs are facing major
sanctions for sponsoring hazing exercises that force new
players to be nude, drink alcohol and suck things off the
floor. And they say gay men don't play sports. Hah! -Cyd
Zeigler jr.
Copy Editor's Lesbian Joke Gets Him Pushed 'Out'
A
now-former copy editor at the Danbury News-Times is looking
for a new job after a "humorous" photo caption accidentally
went live on the newspaper's Web site.
The picture is of a girls' soccer team
celebrating a goal scored in a championship-clinching win
Nov. 5. The newspaper's website published the photograph,
but the caption said it was celebrating a teammate's
decision to "come out of the closet as a lesbian."
Dumb. Very dumb.
Truth be told, this kind of thing
happens regularly: copy editors, bored with reading text for
hours upon hours upon hours, go a little stir crazy and
start coming up with "funny" captions. The hope, of course,
is that it doesn't go live. This one did.
The paper fired the copy editor and
apologized on the Web site and in the print edition of the
paper (with a circulation of 33,000). But, I don't think the
girls in the picture - some of whom have surely heard the
"lesbian" accusation more than once - thought it was so
funny. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Gay Northwestern Fan Loves His Hot Players
A gay Northwestern Wildcats fan has started a blog under the
name of his favorite player - and he's catching some flack
for it.
As he says in the About Us section of
the site: "The
Ross Lane Fan Club is comprised of sexy straight women
and hot gay guys (but mostly hot gay guys) with an arguably
unhealthy obsession with Northwestern University football
and basketball. We are particularly smitten with NU redshirt
freshman wide receiver Ross Lane, hence the name."
Of course, some homophobic fans have
already found the site that just went up this way; and at
least one of them sent the site an email proclaiming: "I
don't think you faggots are funny at all."
We do and wish the Ross Lane Fan Club
the best of luck. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Lesbian Panther Cheerleaders?
The cats were away - and the cheerleaders decided to play.
According to news reports out of Tampa, two Carolina
Panthers cheerleaders were arrested Sunday for an
altercation that occurred after the two women were allegedly
having sex the bathroom of a local bar. The Panthers were in
town to play the Buccaneers Sunday. Carolina won the game,
34-14.
According to records, police arrested
Kristen Lanier Owen, 22, and Angela Ellen Keathley, 26, the
names of two Carolina Panthers TopCats. Owen could also face
obstructin of justice charges, as she allegedly gave police
false identification or a false name upon arrest.
The bar manager told 6News in Tampa that
patrons complained to him that the women were refusing to
leave the stall. Witnesses say they saw the women having
sex. Witnesses allege that when the two women did finally
come out of the stall, they started throwing punches.
Officers told 6News that Keathley was so
drunk she could barely stand. The two women spent the night
in Hillsborough County jail and were released on bond Sunday
morning.
Hillsborough County, which includes
Tampa Bay, voted earlier this year to not allow gay-pride
events. I guess they consider two lesbians in a bathroom
stall a parade. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Anti-Gay Slur Campaign
In 1999, I paid an obscene amount of money to a scalper to
get a ticket to a Manchester United v. Chelsea FA Cup match
in Manchester, England. Walking into the stadium was
something I’ll never forget: the sound of 65,000 people
chanting and singing, the bright color of the pitch, the
excitement in the air. The scalper was right: it was a great
ticket, twelve rows up at the center line. All my excitement
turned a bit sour, however, a few minutes in to the match.
Graham Le Seux was a fullback for Chelsea and every time he
touched the ball – every. single. time. – the United fans
around me would start shouting "Poof! Shirtlifter! Bumboy!"
and other charming British equivalents of "faggot". I later
found out that Le Seux was thought to be gay because (and
this isn’t a joke) he read a left-wing newspaper, The
Guardian, and liked to collect expensive art. All the
anti-gay taunting put a damper on an otherwise great
afternoon.
Six years later, the Football
Association, English football’s governing body, has
announced a campaign to stamp out homophobic abuse of
players and opposing fans. It’s modeled on their
high-profile Kick Racism Out campaign, which has had a
positive effect on the reception black players get at
matches (sadly, there’s not many black fans). Match officals
– referees and linesmen – will be instructed to be on the
lookout for homophobic abuse, with the power to dish out
yellow/red cards to players. The hotline that was set up to
report racist abuse amongst fans will now take complaints of
anti-gay slurs as well. It’s another small, but welcomed,
step towards making homophobic comments a thing of the past
at sporting events, something I wish was a thing of the past
six years ago. [Hat tip to
Towleroad for the link] --Jim Allen
Celtics Voice Concern Over Gay NBA Player
No one will ever come out of the closet in the NBA, if many
of the Boston Celtics have their way. In a story in the
Boston Herald on Tuesday, several members of the
organization voice their concerns over the idea of having a
gay player in the league.
“I probably wouldn’t want to guard him,”
Paul Pierce told the Herald, seemingly only half-joking.
“It’s a lot different in the WNBA,”
Pierce said. “A lot of the girls there are (gay) anyway. I
didn’t know that (Swoopes) was gay, but I’m not really
surprised. I’ve seen a few of them out together, and you
just know.
“But professional basketball would be
tough for a guy. You’re talking about only 12 guys in the
locker room. It’s personal. It would be tough out in public,
too. Our faces are seen more than baseball, where they have
a hat, or football with helmets.”
The questions were a direct result of
WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes' announcement last week that she is
gay.
Celtics coach Doc Rivers told the Boston
Herald that he thinks it would be incredibly rough for an
openly gay player in the NBA.
“The jabs wouldn’t stop,” Rivers said.
“And the guy would have to take it. He’d have to understand
that it wasn’t personal. The great thing about team sports
are the ways these guys can get on each other in the locker
room and on the bus rides, and it’s brutal. These guys leave
no rocks unturned, and the great thing about it is that the
guy who’s the target laughs along with it.
“If a guy came out and said he was gay,
for a day no one would say anything, but then right after
that they would kill him. And it would be in a team way.
That’s all that I hope would happen.”
Former Celtic Robert Parish, who now
works for the team, was surprised about Swoopes' news.
Interestingly, he predicted bad things ahead for her.
“I’m just as surprised as anyone else,
but I do admire her,” Parish said. “It shows that she’s very
courageous, to step forward like that. It could turn out to
be a very negative thing for her, career-wise. It could
alienate family and friends.”
What is most interesting to me in these
comments is that they all predict doomsday for an openly gay
player; yet, it's precisely these people who will determine
whether it's good or bad. It's just too bad that these guys
- these Black men - can get away with saying these things.
Speaking of basketball, the NBA season
tipped off Tuesday night and started up where it left off:
with a Spurs victory. San Antonio beat the Denver Nuggets, a
popular choice to contend for the title, 102-91. Ho-hum. I
hear the seasom ends sometime three years from now. Wake me
up when the playoffs start.-Cyd Zeigler jr.
More Pro Athletes on Gay Players
When asked by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer how he'd feel if one of his
teammates was gay, journeyman forward Danny Fortson, now
with the Seattle Supersonics, his fifth team in eight years,
couldn't have been more unsupportive.
"I wouldn't want to be on that team. It
wouldn't be a good idea," Fortson said. "As athletes, we
still have a grade-school mentality where we pick on people
a little bit. It's not going to work with us. I don't think
it's very acceptable behavior for men as far as I'm
concerned."
My sister is friends with Fortson. When
I called her Wednesday night to ask her about it, she was
incredibly angry. He is homophobic, she said, but a TRUE
homoPHOBE: he's scared of gay people. It's less of a hatred
than a fear, she said.
We say it over and over again, and I
can't help but say it again. Can you imagine if he was white
and said, "I don't want to play with Black people"? Yet, he
gets away with this incredibly hateful speech that builds an
incredibly negative work environment.
Fortson's teammate, Nick Collison, was
more supportive but still painted a very negative picture.
"I've never had a teammate I've known was openly gay,"
Collison told the Post-Intelligencer. "I don't have a
problem with homosexuality. I'm not here to judge people
(but) I don't think (he) would be accepted with open arms, I
can tell you that. I don't think it's right, but that's the
reality of it."
Across town with the Seattle Seahawks,
there was a slightly more enlightened tone in the comments
the Post-Intelligencer reported.
"Obviously, right now if you go around
the corner, there are 20 guys in the shower, and there are
only 15 shower heads," quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said.
"It's a little uncomfortable right now for heterosexuals.
... It's a tough one.
"It would depend. If someone is
professional about their job and is choosing to have the
same focus you're focused on -- winning football games --
(then) great."
Center Robbie Tobeck, who played with
Esera Tuaolo for the Atlanta Falcons, said he didn't "think
it would have changed anything" if he had known Tuaolo was
gay while they played together. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
Cyd and I have been big fans of Howard Stern, especially after he read
stories once on-air from Outsports, including
one that saidthe Montreal Expos mascot Youppi
was gay. Stern was not told the story was a spoof and he got
pissed off at his producer when he found out it wasn’t true.
This was the same Howard Stern who got
New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey
to sayhe’d never play with a gay teammate,
comments that caused an uproar. Stern, on the eve of jumping
to Sirius satellite radio,
gave an interviewto Fox where he talked about
his favorite sports and sex moments on the show. Shockey was
one of them and here’s what he had to say:
“OK, Jeremy Shockey. I asked him if
there were gay guys on his team. And he went ballistic and
he said he would never play with a gay person. And that made
big news because, after all, he exhibited so much
homophobia. And it was kind of a shame in the sense that he
was a huge fan of my show and ever since he did that his
handlers won't let him come back on my show.
“Yeah, because you know he was being
honest. This is a farm boy, and out there you know, you make
love to a chicken. They don't know from anything. So it was
kind of, kind of funny.”--Jim Buzinski
"He's Gay to Me"
We admit we were hoping supermodel Gisele Bundchen knew something we
didn't when we saw that she said about Tom Brady, "He's gay
to me."
Alas, the Victoria's Secret model was
referring to the fact that Brady, the New England Patriots
quarterback, was already dating Bridget Moynahan. “He’s
cute, but if he has a girlfriend, he’s gay to me,” Bundchen
told the Boston Herald after she watched Sunday's
Patriots-Jets game in person. “There are too many men in the
world to go after a man who has a woman. Life is too short.”
Bundchen, who dated Leonardo Di Caprio,
said Brady stacked up pretty well. "Tom Brady, definitely
not too shabby," she said. "He’s pretty cute. All-American,
that’s a good way to describe him."
Brady was a little red-faced when asked
by a Boston radio station about Bundchen's gay comment. "Oh,
geez, that’s a little harsh," he said on WEEI. "That’s
crazy." Brady said it was hard for his teammates to
concentrate on the game Sunday when Bundchen's picture was
posted on the stadium scoreboard. "She was up there [on the
scoreboard] and there’s 11 guys in the huddle looking up at
her," Brady said. "And you go, ‘Come on guys.' "
It seems that everyone drools over
Brady, three-time Super Bowl champion and this year's Sports
Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. Teammate Chrisitan
Fauria said this in October. "I love that guy. I wish he
didn't have a girlfriend. Did I say that out loud? I did,
didn't I?" Tom Brady, a man of all the people. --Jim
Buzinski
Made into a Soccer Player
MTV’s “Made” has made a name for itself making over teenagers and turning
them into things they never thought possible. There was the
girl they made into a pageant queen, the boy who learned to
be a playwright and the girl who wanted to play football.
The latest episode of Made, for me,
takes the prize. The people at MTV found a 295-pound gay
high school junior, who loves drama and participates on the
school cheerleading squad, who wanted to become a soccer
player. Josh came out to his school in Bethel, a town of
2,000 smack dab in the middle of Vermont, as a sophomore and
since then has felt the brunt of jokes from the boys in his
class, many of whom play on the very same soccer team he
wants to join.
Josh’s coach Steve is a hunky (though
Josh doesn’t think so) coach of some sort with Major League
Soccer’s New York/New Jersey MetroStars. He pushes Josh to
his limit, making him run and crawl and run and dribble and
run. Josh struggles through it, all 295 pounds of him.
But the hardest part, it seems, proves
to be socializing with the other boys. At a soccer camp
Steve enrolls Josh in, Josh is more interested in talking
and laughing with the girls. Steve puts his foot down: talk
with jocks or else. When it comes time for the first day of
practice with his team, he’s shocked to find out he’s lost
30 pounds and the guys actually invite him out for food and
a milkshake after practice. Seeing Josh lose weight, change
his image and work his ass off to make the team, it seems,
earned him a little of the guys’ respect; and, of course,
gave Josh a little self-respect along the way.
Josh doesn’t get to start his first
game, but he does get to enter the game with about 12
minutes left. The way the episode is edited, it looks like
Josh even gets an assist in the game; but, I can’t tell if
that is, truly, just the way it was edited.
What I loved about his episode was how
it showed one teenager in New England that through sports
you can learn that you can accomplish anything in life. The
kid went from screaming how he couldn’t do a simple jogging
exercise in 90 seconds (after crying about it, he completed
it in under 60) to taking aim at a starting position on his
high school soccer team. I wish more gay kids would follow
Josh’s lead and get everything they can out of sports while
they’re still young enough to learn the life lessons sports
have to teach. -Cyd Zeigler jr.
"Do You Love Me?"
The strange case of Mike Danton, the former NHL player
convicted in a murder-for-hire plot, got even stranger when
Canadian television got hold of audiotapes between Danton
and his former agent, David Frost.
"Hey, Mike. Listen ... do I have to
worry about my safety any more?" says Frost in one tape to
Danton in 2004 as the player sat in a California jail.
"No, you don't," Danton replies. "I got
to go."
"OK, do you love me?" Frost asks. When
Danton says yes, Frost presses him: "Say it."
"I love you," Danton says.
"Do you?"
"Yeah," is Danton's reply.
The tapes, made by the FBI, were played
on “CBC News: the fifth estate” on Wednesday. They describe
Frost still trying to manipulate Danton in the week after
the player was arrested in a plot to murder the agent.
Danton, 25, is serving a 7 ½-year sentence in a New Jersey
federal after he pleaded guilty in 2004 to trying to arrange
Frost's murder. A female friend who was charged as an
accessory was acquitted.
On the tapes, Frost is heard trying to
coach Danton into what to say to investigators. CBC reporter
Bob McKeown told the Toronto Globe and Mail, "You can hear
in the conversations Frost reclaiming his position as
Danton's mentor — telling him what to do, telling him what
to say and how to say it."
Frost still publicly denies that he was
Danton’s intended target, but on the tapes he asks the
player why he was targeted. "I just wanted fucking to do
things you know and things weren't fucking good between that
person and it was like there was no other way," Danton says,
though he never says who that person is.
Interviews with Danton’s parents, from
who he is estranged, describe Frost as a manipulative creep
who in one incident allegedly duct-taped a preteen player
naked to a bed at a Frost’s summer cottage and took
pictures.
It’s clear that whatever “love” existed
between Danton and Frost was twisted and warped and
influenced by the older man’s Svengali-like effect on the
impressionable player who even dropped his given last name
after the falling out with his parents. As reporter McKeown
says: "It's like a cross between an Elmore Leonard novel and
a Coen brothers movie."
Danton is also asking a federal judge to
reconsider his sentence, contending he was promised a
transfer to a Canadian prison when he pleaded guilty in July
2004. --Jim Buzinski
Soccer Players Coming Out?
We received this story from
the Financial Timesfrom several readers: “Three
homosexual German professional footballers have agreed to
come out of the closet, but only if campaigners can find
eight more gay players to come out with them. One of the
three is very prominent indeed, while the other two play in
Germany’s lower divisions. It’s another sign that the last
bastion of homophobia – male-team sports – is tottering.”
Unfortunately, that’s all the story has
to say about the rumor since the rest is devoted to whether
sports are ready for openly gay players. There’s no
attribution of where this information came from, or who
these “campaigners” are. So forgive me if I’m not as excited
as some of the people who sent me the article.
We hear these rumors all the time and
they never come to pass. Last year, an alleged huge name in
British soccer was going to come out. Never happened. Or we
hear that Magazine X or TV network Y is ready to go public
with a big name. Hasn’t happened. While I’ll be the first
cheering on an active male elite jock who comes out, I’m not
holding my breath. It’s bound to happen one of these days
but let’s wait for a name to be attached to these rumors.
Mike Piazza declaring he’s straight or Jeff Garcia
announcing he’s dating a Playmate don’t count. --Jim
Buzinski
