Out Sports
July 5, 2011
Outsports' 100 most important moments in LGBT-sports history
by Cyd Zeigler jr..
When we look back years from now at 2011, it will be akin to what 1947 was for black athletes. That was the year Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. This year we’ve seen an unprecedented number of gay athletes come out of the closet, and we’ve seen even more straight athletes stand up against homophobia. If there is a tipping point in the long history of gay sports, 2011 is it.
Yet few know the deeply rich history that has led to this groundbreaking year. There are even key moments in gay-sports history that we at Outsports hadn’t heard about or had forgotten.
Over the rest of the summer we will release our list of the 100 most important moments in gay-sports history. We have focused on specific moments, whether they be a few minutes or a day, that have shaped the course of our history; Many of the faces of those moments will be familiar to our readers.
We focused on what we consider to be the “gay-sports movement.” There were certainly amazing gay and lesbian athletes before the Stonewall riots in 1969, but there wasn’t a push for gay equality in sports until after that fateful day in New York City. Our moments range from July 1, 1969 to July 1, 2011.
We could not have developed the list without the help of several people who dug deep into their archives for many of these moments: Gay wrestling guru Gene Dermody; Longtime gay-sports advocate and current head of the GLSEN Sports Project Pat Griffin; Author and high school soccer coach Dan Woog; and author Patricia Nell Warren, who has written about the history of gay athletes for Outsports for years. Over the course of the next two months we will highlight their personal lists of key moments.
We’ll track the full list here:
http://outsports.com/
July 5, 2011
Outsports' 100 most important moments in LGBT-sports history
by Cyd Zeigler jr..
When we look back years from now at 2011, it will be akin to what 1947 was for black athletes. That was the year Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. This year we’ve seen an unprecedented number of gay athletes come out of the closet, and we’ve seen even more straight athletes stand up against homophobia. If there is a tipping point in the long history of gay sports, 2011 is it.
Yet few know the deeply rich history that has led to this groundbreaking year. There are even key moments in gay-sports history that we at Outsports hadn’t heard about or had forgotten.
Over the rest of the summer we will release our list of the 100 most important moments in gay-sports history. We have focused on specific moments, whether they be a few minutes or a day, that have shaped the course of our history; Many of the faces of those moments will be familiar to our readers.
We focused on what we consider to be the “gay-sports movement.” There were certainly amazing gay and lesbian athletes before the Stonewall riots in 1969, but there wasn’t a push for gay equality in sports until after that fateful day in New York City. Our moments range from July 1, 1969 to July 1, 2011.
We could not have developed the list without the help of several people who dug deep into their archives for many of these moments: Gay wrestling guru Gene Dermody; Longtime gay-sports advocate and current head of the GLSEN Sports Project Pat Griffin; Author and high school soccer coach Dan Woog; and author Patricia Nell Warren, who has written about the history of gay athletes for Outsports for years. Over the course of the next two months we will highlight their personal lists of key moments.
We’ll track the full list here:
http://outsports.com/
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