With just these words: “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay,” Jason Collins becomes the first openly gay male athlete in a major American sport in a professional league. A true pioneer!

The story of Alan Gendreau, an openly gay kicker from the South who set records at Middle Tennessee State and now wants a shot at playing in the NFL.

Photo: Tom Jenkins for The Guardian

Out, Kiwi, Olympic speed skater @blakeskjellerup photographed by James Demitri

Charles Barkley, Hall of Fame basketball player in an interview on 106.7 The Fan in Washington.

Barkley told the radio show that he is certain that he had gay teammates, that “every player has played with gay guys,” and any player who says otherwise is “a stone-freakin’ idiot.” He continued:

It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say: ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.

+ here

Jim Tressel, head coach of Ohio State University’s famed football program, did an email interview with Outlook Columbus, an LGBT publication of the state, where he addressed, among other issues, how a gay player should have a supportive environment to declare his identity. He says:

We strive to teach and model appreciation for everyone. One, we are a family. If you haven’t learned from your family at home that people have differences and those strengthen the whole, then you are hopefully going to learn it as part of the Ohio State football family.

Two, every part of our team is important and every role has value — no job is too small and no person is irrelevant — that’s a great lesson that transcends into society. When I think of the diversity we’ve had on our team the past few years, it goes way beyond just a racial, sexual or ethnic mix. We’ve had players who had different religions, players who came from different economic backgrounds, players who are parents, who are spouses, who are caring for ailing parents, who are wheelchair bound, who are battling cancer, and on and on. Whatever a young man feels called to express, I hope we will help him do it in a supportive environment. Everybody is important, and maturity is learning to find and appreciate those differences in others.

More here.

Can you believe that there is only one officially out lesbian women’s college basketball coach? One. One out of more than 350 teams. One. That one is Sherri Murrell, head coach of Portland State University’s team, reports Anna Clark of Salon.com, who in “Lesbian athletes just can’t win”, writes on the rampant homophobia in US women’s sports, particularly college basketball.

It’s a ridiculous statistic in what must be sports’ biggest glass closet, but Clark attempts to show how the lesbian stigma has forced lesbian athletes to keep hush about their personal lives; furthermore, sports organizations and programs have gone out of their way to attempt to change the perception of female athletes as queer by commercially presenting athletes and staff as sexy and desirable, or regular married with kids folk in an embarrassing display of heteronormativity. 

Clark writes:

Homophobia is rife at every level: pro and collegiate, coaches and athletes, in the box seats and in the bleachers. Despite (or because of?) the use of “lesbian” as a denigrating label for women in sports, almost no athletes or coaches are out.

Unfortunately, and perhaps as a result of the this, Clark doesn’t interview any lesbian athletes (open or closeted ones), only mentioning the legendary Sheryl Swoopes, the first and only WNBA athlete to come out. But of course, it’s these voices we need to hear, and continue to hear to create more cracks in this silence about queer women in sports. Clark correctly summarizes:

But the need for collective action remains. Homophobia is so endemic to women’s sports that it calls for nothing less than endemic action, pulling together fans, boosters, coaches, owners, athletes, funders, trainers, athletic directors, sportswriters, administrators, parents, elementary school gym teachers and small-town softball coaches —everyone.

[Photo: Sheryl Swoopes, the first and only WNBA to come out]

(via leftoverkumquats)