ABC News takes an in-depth look at the recent changes in the environment for gay athletes, quoting from friends such as Cyd Ziegler and Jim Buzinski from Outsports and Gay Games Ambassador David Kopay. Here's the opening paragraphs:
It would seem there's never been a better time to be gay in the sports world.
Two Phoenix Suns basketball players have participated in a public service announcement this year denouncing the phrase "that's so gay."
National Football League linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo -- and National Hockey League forward Sean Avery -- backed same-sex marriage in videos, and several people came out: a former Villanova University basketball player, two sports journalists and Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts.
Indeed, 2011 might turn out to be a watershed year for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in athletics, some sports experts and leaders of gay organizations say. Even so, not one active gay male in any of the four major U.S. leagues has publicly come out.
Some say that could change after the San Francisco Giants -- the World Series champions -- complete their video spot for the "It Gets Better" campaign, a movement compiling more than 10,000 videos of those who overcame bullying and social isolation because they were gay, lesbian or transgender.
Giants spokeswoman Staci Slaughter told ABCNews.com the team planned to finish the video in the next few weeks. The Giants have yet to announce who will be in it but Slaughter said, "We do have players participating."
Keep reading HERE.
Sportswriter David Moulton is impatient for a big-four pro athlete to come out so we can get back to the important business of fantasy football:
So we need a current, great male athlete to just take the plunge. You’re gay. You know it. Most people in your life know it. Now everyone in sports knows it. Most of us don’t care. Those that do care and are upset by it, what are they going to do? Boo? You already get booed. They are going to use gay slurs against you? Like you haven’t heard that before. So what’s the big deal?
There was a time only a few years ago when this would be a mistake, and that person likely would not have been accepted inside and outside of sports. But for many reasons that time has come and gone.
I did not write this column to promote a cause. In fact, just the opposite. I’m tired of the word “gay” being in the sports section. Put it back in news, politics, religion, wherever but get it out of my sports! The only agendas here are playing, winning, losing and making money.
Who you date or sleep with doesn’t matter unless it’s my wife or daughter.
So please, can a great male athlete end all of this once and for all. You’re gay. Fantastic.
Now everybody shut up and play.
Read in full HERE.
CBS Sports columnist Mike Freeman says that it's time for Black athletes in particular to stop saying "faggot":
My last conversation about the F-word was with a recently retired NFL player who might one day go into the Hall of Fame. By the end of our chat, we were screaming at one another.
He had used the F-word -- you know which word I mean, the derogatory one used to describe gays -- several times during a talk we were having about the NFL's toughest players. The player, who is African-American, called one of my player suggestions a f-----. He used the word repeatedly.
"A black man should never use that word," I said. "We should know better. It's the moral equivalent of the N-word."
"It's not the same," he said.
"The F-word and the N-word are exactly the same," I responded.
Keep reading HERE.
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