The other Interpride "Game Changers"

The 2012 Interpride magazine features 16 "Game Changers", "16 amazing Americans who are giving their
all to promote equality on (and off) the court". We've posted about the Game Changers closest to the FGG, but we don't want to forget the others:

Anna Aagenes, Kye Allums, Patrick Burke, Helen Carroll, Craig Cassey, Pat Griffin, Robert Lipsyte, Karen Morrison, Martina Navratilova, Pete Olsen, Paul Tagliabue, Hudson Taylor and Equality Coaching Alliance's Kirk Walker.

Read the article here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More 2012

David Kopay and Roger Brigham talk about LGBT people and sport on "Out in the Bay"

Gay Games Ambassadors David Kopay and Chris Morgan
with Roger Brigham and Gene Dermody
at closing ceremony of Gay Games VII, Chicago 2006

From KALW radio's Out in the Bay program:

Queers - and homophobia - in sports. In 1975, former 49er [and Gay Games Ambassador] David Kopay came out as gay, wrote a bestselling book about it, and rocked the sports world. 37 years later, despite all the gains for gay rights generally, only a handful of major athletes have followed him out of the closet. He’s still an activist and athlete, and the official race starter for this year’s SF FrontRunners Pride Run, June 23 in Golden Gate Park. Kopay shared his story on Out in the Bay.

Joining him to talk about queer athletes and homophobia in sports were Helen Carroll, who leads the Sports Project at the National Center for Lesbian Rights; Roger Brigham, "Jock Talk" writer for the Bay Area Reporter [and FGG board member and founder of the Equality Coaching Alliance]; and long-time FrontRunner Katharine Holland. Eric Jansen hosts.

Listen HERE.

Congratulations to Helen Carroll and Pat Griffin, Outsports' persons of the year

From Outsports, some great news about two friends of the FGG:

You’d be hard-pressed to name two people who have collectively had a stronger impact on the gay-sports movement than Pat Griffin and Helen Carroll. These two pioneers have been working toward equality for the better part of 30 years. They’ve visited high schools. They’ve talked to colleges. They’ve waged legal campaigns. They’ve educated educators. And with more incredible work in 2011, our readers have named these two women our “Persons of the Year.”

In 2011 alone, Griffin launched GLSEN’s Changing the Game project, which is bringing tools to end homophobia in sports directly into K-12 sports programs; Carroll, who heads up NCLR’s sports project , has taken a lead roll on the project’s advisory board. Together the women published what has become the NCAA’s de facto policy on trans-athlete participation. Their behind-the-scenes work is unparalleled in this world; Much of what happened in 2011 can be traced in some way to the work these two women did in previous years. And their guidance to us here at Outsports has been invaluable.

The dynamic duo won by the proverbial landslide, garnering 53% of the vote, a testament to their work in what has been dubbed the “gayest year in sports.” High School bloggers and ‘It Gets Better’ teams tied for second with 11% each. Rick Welts and the Golden State Warriors, who together executed what might have been the single-most important moment of the year, earned 10%. Sean Avery received 9% of the vote, and Anton Hysen got 7%.

Read in full HERE.

Roger Brigham reports on Youth Empowerment Summit sports session

As announced HERE, the FGG and Equality Coaching Alliance were present at last weekend's Youth Empowerment Summit in San Francisco. Roger Brigham, board member of the FGG and founder of ECA, organized a workshop there, on which he reported in his column for this week's issue of the Bay Area Reporter:

It was the kind of workshop that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. But there it was this past Saturday: a classroom packed to the gills, standing room only, with LGBT high school students wanting to talk about sports.

I really did not know what to expect when I proposed almost a year ago to the Gay-Straight Alliance Network that it have a sports session during its annual Youth Empowerment Summit in San Francisco. LGBT sports always seemed to register low on the excitement scale at LGBT journalism conventions, and a previous session I had put on earlier this year for students in San Mateo drew just three students.

But the session Saturday at Horace Mann Community School drew a packed and very diverse crowd, eager to ask questions and share stories. One boy talked about being bullied in the locker room and his things being stolen. A transgender athlete from Santa Cruz wanted to know about changing room access issues. All were looking for something they had never experienced before: advice and encouragement from queer adult jocks.

I think the students were most interested to meet Jaime Loo, a graduate from Mission High who came out through wrestling and had a very positive, empowering experience through the sport. (See column HERE) But sadly, his story seemed to be a sharp contrast to the discouraging experiences so many young people in that room expressed. For many, it seemed as if they were problems their teachers wished would go away.

So we encouraged them to choose their battles, not to edit themselves out of sports because of what they fear if they truly want to try them, and to reach out to the resources available. We made some referrals to the National Center for Lesbian Rights. And we told them how much sports meant for us and how through sports, we have built supportive families.

A fine collection of "game plans" for physical education classes, athletes, coaches and administrators exists on the website of the Changing the Game project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. The common theme throughout them? Include would-be athletes, don't isolate them. It's a good thought for this holiday season.

More on NAGAAA-NCLR settlement

We encourage you to look at Roger Brigham's story on the settlement of the discrimination suit against NAGAAA.

A settlement reached this week in a federal lawsuit over disqualification of a San Francisco team from the 2008 Gay Softball World Series leaves a good deal of soul-searching on the table.

"I think it's a step in the right direction," said Vincent Fuqua, commissioner of the San Francisco Gay Softball League. "More work needs to be done but it's definitely heading in the right direction."

As the Bay Area Reporter reported in a blog post November 28, the National Center for Lesbian Rights announced Monday that a lawsuit resulting from the disqualification of the D2 softball team from the championship game in Kent, Washington in 2008 had been settled with the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, with NAGAAA agreeing to reinstate the team's second place finish and become more inclusive of bisexual players. The plaintiffs had also been seeking a total of $225,000; NCLR confirmed that money was included in the settlement but said the amount was confidential.

Keep reading HERE.

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And the Outsports blog post has generated some very interesting discussion. We particularly noted the cogent points made by Charlie Sullivan, a member of the Equality Coaching Alliance.

Read the post and the comments thread HERE.

Gay Softball World Series settles lawsuit with bisexual players

Today as reported in the Bay Area Reporter, by Roger Brigham.

The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA) has settled the remaining parts of a lawsuit with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The San Francisco softball team that was disqualified for players not being gay in the 2008 tournament in Seattle, WA was restored to their 2nd place title and will receive their award.

Earlier this year NAGAAA ammended their rules to include bisexuals and transgender athletes.

The full article can be read on the Bay Area Reporter web site and blog.

Click HERE for the article.

Roger Brigham in Compete on the NAGAAA discrimination case

Compete asked Roger Brigham to write on the NAGAAA discrimination case. We wholeheartedly agree with Roger's take:

Let's get something out in the open, shall we? Regardless of what the judge's preliminary ruling was last week or what will be decided in the federal trial in Seattle in August, the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance rule limiti the number of heterosexuals who are allowed to play in the annual Gay Softball World Series is wrong.

Not just wrong: dead-ass wrong. Pig-headedly and antiquatedly wrong. Counter productive and damaging to the advancement of queer rights and acceptance. A relic from the past shackling the rush of progress.

NAGAAA's Rule 7.05, which says a maximum of two heterosexual players may be on a series roster, may have been a necessary device in decades past. Since then, public access laws in states such as Washington, where the 2008 GSWS was held; or California, home of the D2 softball team that was thrown out of that series, were changed to protect against discrimination against, among other things, race, gender or perception of sexual identity or orientation.

In other words, to protect queers like us. No more in the civilized parts of this country may we legally be barred from full social participation in public venues with public groups. We have equal -- not separate -- rights to public access. That's the right to access -- not the right to deny access.

Constitutional niceties still remain to be parsed by the court, which so far is allowing NAGAAA's policy to stand behind the shield of the First Amendment but has ruled that does not necessarily they have the right to discriminate against anyone, including bisexuals or heterosexuals and still is subject to anti-discrimination legislation. But the very existence of the rule prevents much of the diverse social interaction that occurs in most other gays sports (flag football being a notable exception) and that is the most essential dynamic in true acceptance and the eradication of stereotypes and homophobic barriers -- in other words, the very kind of social interaction that helped create the political climate in which those anti-discrimination laws were passed.

Keep reading HERE.

Roger Brigham on the NAGAAA discrimination case

In his Bay Area Reporter column this week, Roger Brigham writes eloquently about a legal case that will soon be heard by a Federal judge, and a moral case that has gone on far too long. The Federation of Gay Games took a position as soon as this case became public last year that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is unacceptable, whether the victims are presumed to be gay or presumed to be straight.

An extract from the column:

Death to the -isms and the ghettos and the phobias that separate us! We advance gay liberation through the mechanisms of legal protections giving us the right to be who we are wherever we want to be whenever we want to be – the most fundamental and modest of the red-white-and-blue American dreams – and through daily personal interactions with the mainstream that show we are different but we are all of one.

Which is why the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance is wrong to restrict the number of straights who may be on teams playing in the annual Gay Softball World Series.

Dead wrong. Practically, politically, culturally, socially, morally wrong. Whether they are also legally and constitutionally wrong a federal trial in Seattle in June shall decide. A shame if the guardians of the sport allow things to go that far.

A lawsuit, filed a year ago on behalf of three San Francisco softball players after an ad hoc on-the-spot hearing determined that they were "ungay" and therefore their D2 team would have to forfeit its victories in the 2008 Seattle Gay Softball World Series, is scheduled to be tried in June in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, with Seattle District Court Judge John C. Coughenour presiding.

And another:

Some media have referred to the men as "heterosexual." Some have referred to them as "bisexual." The reality is the plaintiffs have never publicized their sexual orientations and the press who jump the gun on this trample on the dignity of people's right to define their orientations on their own terms – or to eschew labels entirely.

What the three men have done, with their gay teammates in a gay league through weeks and months and years of practice, is show publicly their solidarity and support for the queer community and the right for queers to use public playing fields: a right won in places such as California and Washington by generations of queers who lived locked-out, shut-in lives.

Read in full HERE.