Featured events


7-9 September 2012
Brussels Games
Brussels

Brussels Gay Sports will offer a weekend of fun and fairplay in the capital of Europe, with volleyball, swimming, badminton, and tennis, as well as fitness and hiking.

Learn more HERE.
26-28 October 2012
QueergamesBern
Bern, Switzerland

The success of the first edition of the QueergamesBern proved the need for an LGBT multisport event in Switzerland. This year will be even bigger, with badminton, bowling, running, walking, floorball.

Learn more HERE.
17-20 January 2013
Sin City Shootout
Las Vegas
The 7th Sin City Shootout will feature softball, ice hockey, tennis, wrestling, basketball, dodgeball, bodybuilding and basketball.

Learn more HERE.

13-16 June 2013
IGLFA Euro Cup
Dublin
After this year's edition in Budapest at the EuroGames, the IGLFA Euro Cup heads to Dublin for 2013, hosted by the Dublin Devils and the Dublin Phoenix Tigers.

Learn more HERE.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Billie Jean King in Advocate Hall of Fame

The Advocate is celebrating its 45th anniversary and is naming a member of the Hall of Fame for each year. Gay Games Ambassador Billie Jean King is the hero for 1981 (hat tip to Outsports):

Billie Jean King first exploded onto the tennis scene in the 1960s, winning her first Wimbledon title during her first doubles tournament, and then 20 more Wimbledon titles by the end of the 1970s. In 1971, she was the first female athlete to win more than $100,000 for winning a match, but King knew it was wrong that she and other female players were generally paid less than male players.

She fought Bobby Riggs, one of the top-ranked U.S. players of the 1930s and 1940s to take a stand against sexism and unequal pay in one of the most famed and storied tennis matches of her life, the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes." Though Riggs was past his prime at that point, he claimed that the women's game was inferior, striking a nerve with King. She trounced him, in a tennis match watched by 50 million people around the world. Three years later, King became the first president of the Women's Tennis Association.

King was well accomplished by the arrival of the 1980s, when a palimony lawsuit from a former lover suddenly put her personal life in the spotlight. King, who was married, was having an affair with her assistant. King beat the lawsuit, but it still cost millions in endorsements and lead to a divorce. Despite all she had lost and left to lose, the tennis star decided to host a press conference in 1981 against her lawyer’s wishes to admit to the affair. Now she is one of the most vocal proponents of LGBT people and women in sports from the school level, up to the pros.
-Michelle Garcia

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