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Gay sports league in Oklahoma City open to all
There’s been some hand-wringing the last few years about how many, if any, straight people should be allowed to play on gay sports teams. A sports league in Oklahoma City has resolved that issue by welcoming everyone.
From News OK:
By Carrie Coppernoll 2
Published: June 22, 2011 Playing gay softball all started out as the biggest group effort ever to find our friend a date. This Sunday, we wrapped up our fifth year playing in the Sooner State Softball Association. Our team has a record as bad as the Chicago Cubs, but our friend has a boyfriend. Our team name this year was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a tribute to hubbub about straight players in gay softball leagues. The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, also known as NAGAAA, limits teams that enter the Gay Softball World Series to two straight players per team. Some organization officials didn’t want teams to bring in straight ringers. Like me. [SNIP] But at home, anyone can play, league Commissioner Jim Knox said.
“We believe that opening our league up to fair-minded people and having them play together knocks down stereotypes for both our community and the straight community as well,” he said. After five years, the core of our team is still straight people. Most are married. Some have children. The league assigns us a few extra players to fill our rosters, and most of them are gay people we don’t know.
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Gay rights pioneer Joe Norton to be remembered in Albany
From TimesUnion.com: ALBANY — A celebration is planned Sunday to recall the life of Joseph Norton, a former psychology professor, World War II veteran and leading figure in Albany’s gay rights movement. Norton, a Cobleskill native and longtime city resident, died Wednesday. He was 92. In 1970, Norton was among a group of men who — in the wake of the gay rights protests that flared in New York City a year earlier — coalesced to form the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Council, now 41 years old and believed to be the oldest such continuously operating organization of its kind in the country. [SNIP] The list of organizations Norton either helped found or lent his time to was lengthy, including the Association of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexuals in Counseling, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the New York State Coalition of Gay Organizations, National Association of Gay Psychologists and, locally, the Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless and the Capital District Counselors Association. DETAILS: What: A community celebration of Joe Norton
Where: First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany, 405 Washington Ave.
When: 4 p.m. Sunday
Reach Jordan Carleo-Evangelist at 454-5445 or jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com ]]>