Despite the passing of Prop. 8 in California, it’s still nice to see how many prominent people were against it. Add former NBA player Doug Christie to the list. The guard, who played in California with the NBA’s Clippers and Kings, and his wife had hoped to celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary next July with [...]
Posts under ‘Politics’
Follow Prop. 8 anti-gay marriage initiative
Here is a good link to follow the fight in California over Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage. Use the drop-down menu to find Prop. 8. Share on Facebook
Steelers fans cheer and Obama wins!
For the last 17 presidential elections, the Washington Redskins have determined the outcome of the popular vote. When the Washington Redskins won their last home game before the election, the party that won the last popular vote in the presidential election repeated their win; when the Redskins lost, the party winning the last popular vote [...]
Pro jocks in touch with presidential campaign
It’s the stretch run of a hotly contested political season and even athletes, historically non-political, are getting into the presidential race. “We spend an hour a day talking about this exact subject – in meetings, on the plane, in the locker room,” New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita told the AP. “I think it’s just [...]
Palin Booed at Flyers Game
The other day, Sarah’s Palin’s handlers thought her ”hockey mom” image would get her an easy goal at at the Philly Flyers game, where she’d been invited to drop the puck. But the sports spin really backspun on the vice presidential candidate. The minute her name was announced, the crowd erupted into loud boos and whistles, almost drowning out [...]
Charger rallies against gay marriage
San Diego Charger Jacques Cesaire (left) was a featured highlight yesterday at an anti-gay-marriage rally sponsored by iprotectmarriage.com, we have learned from Good As You blog. They have an audio recording of the event in which Cesaire and NFL free agent Akbar Gbaja-Biamila (right), brother of Packer Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila (KGB), encourage everyone in attendance to [...]
Eagles fan running for Veep
Last year, during the early days of the presidential campaign, Time magazine interviewed the spouses of the candidates from both parties (in other words, 16 women and Bill Clinton). Joe Biden dropped out of the race after finishing 5th in the Iowa caucuses, but he’s now Barack Obama’s running mate. So it’s good to know [...]
Chicago a finalist for 2016 Olympics
The IOC announced Wednesday that Chicago is among four cities still in the running to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The other cities in contention are Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. Only Tokyo has hosted a previous Olympics (1964). Ever since the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, Chicago has joined San Francisco and New York [...]
Obama knows gay fashion
There is an interesting article on Reggie Love, 26, a former Duke basketball player, who is Barack Obama’s “body man” on the campaign trail. In this capacity, he has probably spent more time with Obama the past 15 months than the candidate has with his wife. He makes sure that Obama gets up on time [...]
Utley, Halladay get thumbs up from W
Soon-to-be former President George W. Bush used to be the managing general partner of the Texas Rangers. This in itself doesn’t mean he knows his baseball — after all, how many championships have the Rangers won? — but he was asked this week who would be the first position player he’d want if he owned [...]
California overturns ban on gay marriage
Not sports-related, but as a California resident and gay man, wow!: SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory. The lead attorneys in the case were from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, whose Homophobia in Sports project has done [...]
Beijing flame continues humiliating journey
The Summer Olympics keep growing and growing. The newest Olympic sport is called Flame Dousing. So far the French are winning. They managed to extinguish the Olympic flame five times during Monday’s glorious torch procession through Paris. On Sunday, the Brits made several daring swipes at the flame as it passed through London, but their brightest hope, a man [...]
Sir Ian McKellen singles out closeted athletes
At a speech Thursday for Stonewall’s annual Equity Dinner in London, Sir Ian McKellen ended his keynote remarks with an interesting question: “Where are the sports people who will brave the ragging in the changing rooms and the heckling from the terraces?” Coming from him, this is more than a fair question. McKellen is openly gay. He participates [...]
Crackdown on gays Olympics related?
Reports from Wan Yanhai, a respected AIDS activist in China, say that authorities there are cracking down on gay establishments, possibly related to the run-up to this summer’s Olympics. Two examples: In the afternoon of 20 March 2008, more than 10 police cars visited “Oasis” club, the most popular gay bath house in Beijing. More [...]
Politics and the NFL kick-off
The NFL is set to for a couple announcements about their kickoff game that has traditionally been the Thursday after Labor Day for the last few years. It seems the game will feature the Washington Redskins at the New York Giants this year; the last Super Bowl winner has hosted the last few. But the [...]
137 days to Beijing: Protests cast shadow over Olympic torch relay
The 85,000 mile Olympic torch relay began today in Greece and is scheduled to pass through 134 cities on five continents, including stops on the summit of Mt. Everest and in the Himalayan town of Lhasa, where Chinese authorities used deadly force to break up pro-independence protests last week. The flame lighting ceremony was briefly [...]
Is activism a bad word in sports?
Are athletes involved in non-sports causes “activists”? And if so, why is that such a bad thing? A recent NY Times article profiled a letter-writing campaign headed by Ira Newble, an NBA player, aimed at pressuring China to intervene in the desperate situation in Darfur. Many of Newble’s teammates (he was with Cleveland at the [...]
Sports venue safety not a given
Increased security is a given at many sporting events these days. Often fans are subject to bag searches, hand-held metal detector waves and even pat-downs. This is supposedly for our own safety. I’m not crazy about it, but I can understand it. But I’d like security measures to be as unobtrusive as possible and applied [...]
148 days to Beijing: top athletes pulling out
If the Olympics are exciting because they feature the world’s best athletes competing on the world’s biggest stage, Beijing organizers took a few hits this week. Haile Gebrselassie, the fastest man ever to run a marathon (2 hrs, 4 min, 26 sec), said on Monday he will skip the Olympics, afraid that exposing his distance-running [...]
Gay sports called “apartheid”
Northern Ireland Sports Minister Edwin Poots wins the award for clueless official of the year after he compared gay sports team to apartheid. Discussing Belfast’s Ulster Titans, a gay rugby team, Poots said: “I just cannot fathom why people see the necessity to develop an apartheid in sport.” “It would be unacceptable to produce an [...]