Last autumn, Dodd wrote a first-person account of coming out on his high school and club volleyball teams. His father followed that up with a moving piece about the importance of his son’s coming out. Congratulations to both men on the recognition!

Share on Facebook

The first reactions to the new Seattle look certainly are polarizing. Packers tight end Jermichael Finley tweeted: “Seahawks has the best looking Jerseys. THEY ARE SICK!” Lukas called them “SERIOUSLY ugly.” I fall more in the middle, but generally like them. You can decide for yourself.

Wrote Lukas:

The Seahawks were the one team that agreed to put their uniform into the Nike design centrifuge. Your assessment of the results probably depends on A) whether you view football as a video game played by comic book superheroes in costumes, or as a sport played by human beings in uniforms, and B) your tolerance for neon green. Uni Watch doesn’t much care for the new look, but the team’s old look was nothing to write home about either, so it’s no great loss. In the grand scheme of things, call it a push.

Home:

Road:

Lukas has a bunch of the new-look unis on his Twitter feed.

Photos from Seahawks.com

Share on Facebook

The reported story said that another male passenger spewed homophobia at Turbay because he made a pro-Obama statement. According to Turbay, that isn’t true. The passenger had been clearing his throat loudly and Turbay asked him if he was okay. Turbay claims the man became belligerent, saying “you’re a queer, you faggot.”

When an Alaska Airlines employee came to resolve the dispute, the male passenger claimed that Turbay had called him an “asshole” first. That’s when Cornell interjected that the other passenger was lying. Cornell’s wife also said she was offended by the passenger’s anti-gay comment.

Alaska Airlines eventually asked the man to leave. It was only after the man had left the lounge that another passenger made a pro-Obama statement.

Turbay was not thrilled with how the airline handled the incident:

I thought Alaska Airlines did a poor job. Even after confirming the incident, they were concerned about not calling security so the guy would not be kicked out and miss his flight. And also were very attentive to him to reimburse him for been kicked out. Meanwhile other than a later apology, nothing was offered to me to compensate for the incident.

Share on Facebook

In the men’s 10m platform preliminaries, considered the “main event,” Lin Yue of China won the preliminary round, while defending Olympic champion Matthew Mitcham placed fourth. David Boudia was the top American, placing 12th in the prelim, while Thomas Finchum finished with a poor showing at 35th (he reportedly missed on two dives). Mitcham was the only diver to break the Chinese lock on gold in Beijing, so we’ll see if he can do it again. The semifinals and finals are both Saturday.

Elsewhere in the Diving World Cup, Canadian diver Alexandre Despatie, probably best-known in gay circles for filling out his red swimsuit very nicely, finished fifth in the synchronized 3m springboard with his diving partner (remember this name), Reuben Ross. Americans Troy Dumais and Kristian Ipsen finished sixth in that event. Boudia and Nick McCrory finished fourth in the synchronized 10m platform and qualified for the Olympics.

Michael Leask was live-Tweeting from the event (and has some photos and videos), so you may want to follow him for Saturday’s semis and finals.

Share on Facebook

The EPMD member said that Hip Hop will never have openly gay rappers because it can play against an emcee to admit to homosexuality.

“No. It’s the same about when you talk about sports players, too. We don’t know if that’s going to ever happen because that’s a curse to be in sports and to be gay and be in Hip Hop and be gay. You can’t be on a basketball team, a football team and be homo. … They’ll kill you.”

In a rambling video interview, Sermon decried seeing “girl on girl” or “boy on boy” action on A&E or VH1, saying this because these channels are controlled by gays and it’s not something he wants his kids to watch, lest they be influenced.

He also denies rumors that he is gay, saying you could ask a lot of women who will deny it. “People know about me, about the women, there’s no hiding that. Niggas known I was dominant with that. Not to be boasting, but are you serious?” No homo, he.

Check out his bizarre interview:

Share on Facebook

In his talk, Tagliabue referred to the dinner several times. “The beautiful thing I heard tonight is that [students] are anxious about being leaders and want to be leaders and want to find out how to lead on these issues [of strengthening tolerance in sports],” he said. The sophomore athletes who attended the pre-talk dinner were all selected by their coaches based on their future leadership potential. At the dinner, they discussed ways to make their team cultures more welcoming to LGBTQ players.

Tagliabue, who was commissioner of the NFL from 1989 to 2006, has made gay rights a priority. He and his wife last October endowed the LGBTQ Resource Center at Tagliabue’s alma mater, Georgetown University, with a $1 million gift. Tagliabue described this act as “a way of making a statement, to say this center is a priority and it’s permanent.”

He said that pro sports have come a long way in addressing gay slurs uttered by players, saying  “there’s been a substantial shift in major sports’ conduct and language.” During his tenure as NFL commissioner, then Lions president Matt Millen called a player a “faggot” with no repercussions. It’s hard to believe the same thing would happen now.

The Bowdoin dinner sounded fascinating and the student paper has some terrific excerpts from athletes and coaches from the event (last year, we wrote an article on an openly gay Bowdoin tennis coach and a lacrosse player). I especially liked this anecdote told by the women’s tennis coach:

“Hobie” Holbach told a story about getting lost on a 10,000-foot mountain with Colin Joyner ’03 and Bowdoin’s former men’s tennis coach. After scrabbling down a steep slope, they got trapped at the bottom of a ravine at 1 a.m., freezing cold and soaking wet. To stay awake and warm, they paced back and forth and told stories. At one point Joyner, who had known Holbach for years, confessed he was gay. “What do you think of that?” Joyner asked. Holbach responded, “Does it help us get us off this frickin’ mountain?” While they were happily rescued by helicopter the next day, Holbach said he was saddened that it took a life-threatening situation to convince Joyner to confide in him. “As a coach, I would be very sad if my players felt like they couldn’t open up to me or the other team members,” Holbach said.

Hat tip to Ken for the item.

Share on Facebook

It ends with player James Haskell looking at a shot of himself, saying: “Looks like I’ve got a bit of an erection, but we can file [airbrush] that out.” Video:

Share on Facebook

Photo by Anthony White

Patricia Manuel of Long Beach, Calif., is competing this week in the first Olympic boxing trials for women. The 2012 Games in London will feature women boxers in three weight classes. Manuel (49-14) competes in the lightweight division (132 pounds).

She is part Irish, Mexican and black. And as the Long Beach Press-Telegram reports, she is also an out and proud lesbian.

Manuel takes pride in being a female athlete and a lesbian. She hopes to use the Olympic stage as a platform to encourage other gay and lesbian athletes.

“I want to show people this is America, too: a butch, multiracial boxer,” she said. “I want people to know I am gay and can do great things.”

Regardless of how she does at the Olympic trials, Manuel wants to help other gays and lesbians. I found this passage cool:

For now, she works valet security at Hamburger Mary’s in Long Beach and wants to teach self-defense and boxing to homeless gay youth.  She also hopes to inspire them.  “I know there are people having difficulty with their sexuality,” she said. “If someone sees a proud butch lesbian and it helps them, that’s great.”

I will update this post once the Trials are over. If she survives this, she will compete in the world championships in May and needs to finish in the top eight to get to London. I will be rooting for her to make the team and have a bigger audience this summer.

Update: Manuel had to withdraw from the competition due to a chronic shoulder injury that flared up again after her Monday fight. “I’m sorry my story ends like this,” she texted the L.A. Times.

Share on Facebook

“Like a lot of people, I thought to be gay you had to be feminine, you had to go to nightclubs and you had to be in the scene and I was never into that,” said Cecchin, who has refereed 116 NRL games and four Test matches.

“I played sport, I loved rugby league, I liked going to the pub with my mates. It wasn’t until I read Ian’s book that I started to tick a few boxes. In the early days when people found out, I would tell my mates to ask me every question they wanted answered.

“And there were some good ones, especially after a couple of schooners.

Cecchin referred last year’s Grand Final, the NRL’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, so this is a big deal. He was engaged to be married 13 years ago and says his teenage son has been totally accepting of his sexual orientation. He said he has never heard any gay slurs while working a match.

“I can honestly say I’ve never ever heard or been called anything to do with being gay on the field,” Cecchin said. “I haven’t been treated any differently. I haven’t been treated as a token and I haven’t been discriminated against. …

“But me coming out has … to do with the youth that are growing up today that may be going through a whole world of hurt and fear. My experience is they don’t need to be. People are OK with it now.”

Good for Cecchin and it’s fantastic to have an out person at the highest reaches of a sport.

Share on Facebook

1992 Super Bowl halftime

While this may be the “gayest Super Bowl ever,” especially with Madonna as the halftime entertainment, Deadspin’s Tom Scocca’s reminds us that the big game has had a gay influence for a long time.

In fact, a survey of Super Bowl halftime history reveals that, pace Madonna, these splashy, highly choreographed song-and-dance theatrical routines have often owed a debt to gay culture. The early shows may have featured old-fashioned university marching bands, but by Super Bowl V, Carol Channing was headlining. By Super Bowl XXVI, Brian Boitano was figure-skating onstage, with music by Gloria Estefan.

Scocca has put together an inspired and brilliant chart placing all 45 Super Bowl halftime shows on the Kinsey 1-6 scale. Disney’s New Mousekeeters of 1977 are a 1, an “exclusively heterosexual” act, while I loved him putting the 1972 Carol Channing, Ella Fitzgerald and U.S. Marine Corps Drill Team as a 5.5 on the gay scale. Last year’s Black Eyed Peas were rated “asexual.” Comedy gold.

Share on Facebook