"Brandon Triche is your typical college senior, frazzled by pulling an all-nighter after a computer erased most of a term paper due for his communications class. He is also a collegiate gymnast who recently competed in the Division II national gymnastics finals. He is also openly gay—complete with a partner, and parents who are struggling with his sexuality." -; Outsports.com news item.
"We're not going to go there. Any intent to draw a ( gay relationship ) parallel would be wrong. Anyone who knows Popeye and Bluto understands that's not the case, there's no intent like that." -; Dan Shafer, a spokesman for Houston-based Minute Maid to GFN.
"Over the past few days the topic has been the buzz on sports talk radio shows, the cable TV networks, and various Internet chat rooms across the country. The Editor's Letter by Brendan Lemon appeared in the May edition of Out magazine and it begins: For the past year and a half, I have been having an affair with a pro baseball player from a major-league East Coast franchise, not his team's biggest star but a very recognizable media figure all the same. ... [ If he came out, ] I'm pretty confident there'd be more support from the team than he imagines. With the exception of an occasional judgmental type, most of these straight guys don't have a problem with homosexuality. Their prime concern is winning, not who you're sleeping with.' Oh? It would be nice if Lemon's last two lines were true. But Billy Bean, the only major-leaguer who has followed Lemon's suggested path—and even then, only after he retired from baseball in 1996-;cut loose a sardonic laugh yesterday and said, 'I think it's easy to say those things when you're the editor of a gay and lesbian magazine. But if I were that ballplayer, I'd have cold sweats right now. I agree the world is becoming a little more tolerant,' Bean added, ;but [ Lemon ] has to understand baseball, the mentality of baseball fans, the cultural differences of the people thrown together, and how that player has to produce and play. I mean, the game is hard enough, let alone having to deal with that. If he came out, he'd be the most important player to talk to. Overnight. And I think as proud as I am that there are gay and lesbian athletes that can represent us, this is not about pushing people out on a plank and saying, Jump and lead us.'" -; Newsday article May 18.
"Being a gay male athlete is still the strongest taboo in sports, especially big-time male team sports. While women jocks routinely are presumed to be lesbians, there's an equally laughable but nonetheless rampant denial going on that any male athletes could be gay, let alone gay and starring as someone's cleanup hitter or rifle-armed quarterback. But they are, of course." -; Newsday.
"An explosive new study says some straight people can turn gay if they really want to. Dr. Horace Queen, a psychiatrist at Boston's Mass Genital Hospital who led the study, said he cannot estimate what percentage of highly motivated straight people can change their sexual orientation. But he said the research 'shows some people can change from straight to gay, and we ought to acknowledge that.' Queen defined 'highly motivated straight people' as men and women who wanted to improve their wardrobes and have more frequent sex. The issue has been hotly debated in the scientific community and among religious groups, some of which contend straights can become homosexual through prayer, counseling and shopping therapy." -; Satire in the May 18 San Francisco Gate.
"Queen conducted 45-minute telephone interviews with 200 people, 143 of them men, who claimed they had changed their orientation from heterosexual to gay. ... Most said they had used more than one strategy to change their orientation. About half said the most helpful step was work with a mental health professional. About a third cited a support group, and fewer mentioned such aids as books, the Holly Near box set and mentoring by a homosexual." -; The SF Gate .
"In a move designed to capture the imagination and funding of millions, comedy pioneer, Kate Clinton has announced her conversion to faith-based comedy. Since 1985, Clinton has been proud to append the descriptive appositive 'family entertainer' to her name. 'I wore it proudly, as a badge of honor, when we could be in the scouts.' During the years of the Clinton administration, the honor and virtue of her surname supplanted the letter, never the spirit of family entertainer. But with the return to the Bush, as extended a family as the Sopranos, things changed. 'We watched videos of hundreds of focus groups and the word family does not register as it used to,' said Ginger Digit, Clinton's branding consultant. 'Family used to be a nice little noun. Now it's everywhere— family film, family burger, family values. It doesn't mean anything.'" -; More satire, this time from lesbian comic Clinton.
"As George W. Bush marked his first 100 days, it seems the Log Cabin Republicans have been engaged in a round of influence peddling that is hilarious bordering on zany. Recently, Log Cabin leader Rich Tafel and others apparently showed up at the door of their longtime arch-enemy, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay lobby, asking for a whopping $200,000, hawking their supposed connection to Bush. Several individuals close to both groups say jaws dropped among the HRC staff, which in a goodwill gesture apparently wrote a check for $1,000 and sent the Log Cabinites on their way. ... The next stop on Log Cabin's cash-for-access tour: The San Francisco AIDS Foundation, according to one person associated with the group, where Log Cabin will argue that it has connections to the Bush AIDS czar and will thus be an asset to AIDS groups. Last year, according to the same individual, Log Cabin received over $50,000 from the pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Welcome, which obviously has a great interest in having AIDS issues furthered among Republicans in Congress in a way that benefits drug makers. Now, hawking supposed access to the AIDS czar and the White House itself, Log Cabin has apparently asked the drug company Pfizer for $150,000." -; Michelangelo Signorile writing for Gay.com May 3.
