Month: July 2011

The second video in Outsports’ partnership with the It Gets Better Project comes from Kirk Walker, the head softball coach at Oregon State. Walker was first profiled by Outsports in 2007 as the only openly gay male coach in Division I sports. Said Walker: “I am in a unique situation. I am a Division I […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Sports 2007: NCAA President Myles Brand was an advocate for the rights of LGBT people in college sports. And when he died of cancer in 2009, he was remembered fondly by Helen Carroll, head of the sports program at the National […]

Julien Leparoux Twelve top American jockeys have stripped down for a 2012 calendar that will assist the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund. It costs $13.99 and is a good cause, and also shows these jockeys have some rocking bods. From the Albany Times Union: OK. Let’s just be frank. Jockeys are athletes. Many of them have […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Football, 1985. Former Pitt Panther standout Ed Gallagher lied down atop the Kensico Dam, asked God for forgiveness, and rolled into the open space 100 feet above the ground. Gallagher had recently given into his gay sexual desires for the first […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Gay sports, 2003: It was not an amicable divorce. In 2001, the Federation of Gay Games awarded the 2006 Gay Games to Montreal. Just two years later, after charges and countercharges, the contract was still not signed and Chicago was awarded […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Soccer, 2011. We at Outsports haven’t heard a negative coming-out story in men’s sports in over 10 years. The retort to that is often, “Yes, but it’s different for the pros than high school and college.” Enter Anton Hysen, the European […]

The Baltimore Orioles became the fourth Major League Baseball team to produce a video for the It Gets Better Project to fight teen bullying. The Orioles were proactive in getting the word out, sending us this background on the video: The Orioles today announced that they have released an 80-second anti-bullying video public service announcement […]

The Gay Games cleared a hurdle in settling out-of-court a lawsuit filed against them by the Cleveland Synergy Foundation. The CSF had originally won the bid to host the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland, but the Federation of Gay Games has since stripped them of organizing duties and handed the reins to another group led […]

Last night the Pirates and Braves played 19 innings…that ended with what looks to me like one of the worst officiating calls ever in pro sports. It’s one thing to miss a 90 mph strike or get it wrong when a pile of bodies bury one another at a goal line. But to miss the […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Sports, 2011: Sean Avery was not the first pro athlete to come out for gay marriage (NFL players Scott Fujita and Brendan Ayanbadejo beat him to it), but his announcement this spring made bigger news. Avery made a video to support […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Cricket, 2011. On Feb. 27, 2011, Steven Davies became the first publicly out international cricketer in history. He had already been out to teammates for a while, but the team banded together to conceal the secret from the public. For those […]

Two former Cincinnati Bengals, including Hall of Famer Anthony Muñoz, are co-sponsoring a fundraiser for the Ohio-based anti-gay hate group Citizens for Community Values. Former kicker Jim Breech joins Muñoz as a co-sponsor. The group’s annual golf classic, to be held on Sept. 6, costs $110 per person to participate and will raise tens of […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Hurling, 2009: Hurling is an unknown sport in the U.S., but it is huge in Ireland, so the coming out of star player Donal Óg Cusack was a milestone for the country. Cusack is the first elite Irish athlete to come […]

In the first Equality Night with Major League Soccer’s Chivas USA last night the home team scored a big 3-0 win over the Houston Dynamo. It was a fun night with a couple hundred gays and lesbians attending the pre-game reception with the NOH8 campaign then watching an historic game as Chivas’ Justin Braun (right) […]

Wrestler Akil Patterson with the first video Outsports is excited to announce a new partnership with the It Gets Better Project™. Together the two organizations will feature videos by out LGBT people in sports. We have begun contacting athletes, coaches and administrators whose coming out stories have appeared on Outsports to make videos, and the […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Baseball, 2003. Jim and I used to say that we had two coming outs: The first was coming out to our friends and family as gay; The second was coming out to our gay friends as sports fans. In 2003, saying […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Baseball, 2011: The "It Gets Better" project started last September as a response to a spate of suicides by gay and lesbian young people. Since then, more than 10,ooo videos have been produced and viewed a collective 35 million times. Sports […]

In the end, it seems DeSean Jackson’s stupidity helped do some good after all. I was pleased to see that MLB teams began to create their own "It Gets Better" videos to help combat bullying. The San Francisco Giants were the first to complete theirs, followed by the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. In […]

Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Various sports, 2009. Before Kye Allums came out, NCLR’s Helen Carroll and It Takes A Team’s Pat Griffin were already planning for it. In October 2009 they organized the first-ever Equal Opportunity for Transgender Student-Athletes think tank to get ahead of […]

Los Angeles-based Chivas USA is holding Major League Soccer’s first-ever ‘Equality Night’ on Saturday, July 23. It is shaping up to be a really special night. They are hosting the Houston Dynamo that night; Dynamo star Mike Chabala has been an outspoken advocate against homophobia and participated in the NOH8 campaign. The Chivas cheerleaders have […]