Month: September 2011

James Casey of the Texans The Bills and Lions stay perfect and erase huge deficits; the Raiders stun the Jets; OK to be gay in the NFL; and the hot players of the week. How I saw Week 3 of the NFL: Two Rust Belt cities that are struggling economically have two exciting 3-0 teams […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Baseball, 1999. When Jeff Pearlman was assigned by Sports Illustrated in 1999 to write a story about Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker, he was expecting to pen an image-rehabilitation article. Pearlman told Outsports this week: I knew he was something […]

Pete Olsen at Wide Rights did a comparison of the collective bargaining agreements between the NFL and the NFL Players Association in 2006 and 2011. What he found was pretty cool: The addition of “sexual orientation” in the article on player security. Section 1. No Discrimination: There will be no discrimination in any form against […]

The New York Mets hosting the team's second "gay night."

San Francisco softball team of the 1970s Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Softball, 1977: The owner of the Badlands bar in San Francisco teamed up with bar owners in New York to send the Ramrod team west to play in a best three-of-five series. Badlands won […]

The Michigan Wolverines have been pushing against homophobia for over a decade.

Mitch Stein (Patch.com photo) Mitch Stein, an openly gay man, was fired as the junior varsity boys water polo coach at Charter Oaks High School in Covina, Calif., after pictures surfaced of him with people dressed in drag. Stein is a graduate of the school and his daughter is a freshman at the school. Stein […]

The Swim for Equality will complete its second season this weekend with a finish-line party in Malibu, Calif., Saturday, Sept. 24, 12noon-5pm. The party is a celebration of the swim earlier that day. You can buy tickets to the party, at the home of composer and Out 100 honoree Nathan Barr, at the Equality California […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Diving, 2008. You’ve seen the likes of it in big Hollywood movies, but you’ve rarely seen it in real life. The hopes of gay fans around the world hung on one single dive. In the 10m finals in Beijing, Matthew Mitcham […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Rugby league, 1995: Ian Roberts was a top-level professional player in Australia's rugby league. And he came out openly as gay to a gay magazine while still playing. He is one of the very few players from a major world team […]

On Saturday, September 24, 2011, Boston’s FLAG Flag Football League and the Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth will be hosting a first-ever GLBTQ Youth Field Day. The event will be held from 1pm-5:30pm on the M Street Field in Independence Park in South Boston, located on E. 1st Street between M and N Streets. Teens […]

There’s a great review of Spike TV’s ‘Blue Mountain State’ over at AfterElton, highlighting some of the nudity and some of the good-natured fun of the show. From Michael Jensen: While it would certainly be a stretch to say that Spike TV's Blue Mountain State is free from stereotypical gay jokes and gay panic humor, […]

“Sam I Am” is a new blog written by Sam, a 16-year-old high school junior in Pennsylvania. In ninth grade he was on the school swim team, but he quit his sophomore season, feeling inadequate and lonely, which he chalks up to wrestling with his sexuality. Sam now intends to rejoin his swim team this […]

David Beckham has been the poster child for athletes willing to strip down and show off their gorgeous bodies. Most notably he’s done it for Armani underwear. Now come new photos and videos of tennis great Rafael Nadal following Beckham’s lead…in nothing but his Armanis. We saw a batch of them before, but the latest […]

One of the reasons we hear professional athletes don’t come out is that they don’t have a good reason. “They would risk too much,” we hear. “They can just wait until after retirement.” But of course, even then they keep chasing a million-dollar dangling post-career carrot. So they stay in the closet. Let me introduce […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Basketball, 1991: Magic Johnson's announcement on Nov. 7, 1991, that he had tested positive for HIV and was retiring from the NBA was the biggest story in America. Johnson was a superstar — every network carried the press conference live and […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Tennis, 1977. In 1976 the United States Tennis Association barred female transgender tennis player Renee Richards from playing as a woman in the U.S. Open. The issue at hand was a born-female rule, and the USTA said Richards would have to […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history.Diving, 1994: “Welcome to the Gay Games, it’s great to be out and proud.” With those words, gold medal Olympic diver Greg Louganis delivered a message to the Opening Ceremonies of Gay Games IV in New York. While it might have been […]

Just 24 hours before his final moments as president of the Phoenix Suns, Rick Welts was looking ahead with memories of the years he was afraid to come out of the closet. Having posed hours before for the NOH8 campaign, his role in ameliorating that fear for others was top-of-mind. “Having had no one in […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Basketball 2007: Amaechi played for two of his five NBA seasons for the Utah Jazz for an owner who, after Amaechi had left the team, refused to show "Brokeback Mountain" in his theaters because of the gay theme. So it was […]