A 29-year-old marathon runner will be the first out trans woman to compete in a US Olympic trial.
In Atlanta on February 29, Megan Youngren and 62 other women will compete for a spot on the US Olympic team.
The winners at the trials will represent the US in the Summer Games in Tokyo later this year.
Youngren came 40th at the California international marathon in December with a time of 2:43:52 – good enough to qualify for the Atlanta marathon trials.
Her California qualifying time came after running the Los Angeles marathon in 3:06:42 last year, too. Youngren says this is what spurred her to train more intensively.
“I thought that if I worked incredibly hard and took some huge risks that I could run a 2:45,” Youngren said.
“People will try to put it down by saying, ‘That’s too easy because you’re trans.’
“But what about the 500 other women who will qualify? There’s probably someone with the exact same story.
“I trained hard. I got lucky. I dodged injuries. I raced a lot, and it worked out for me.
“That’s the story for a lot of other people, too.”
Susan Hazzard, the US team’s track and fields spokesperson, said: “To my knowledge, and that of other staff who have been with USATF for many years, we do not recall a trans competitor at our marathon trials.”
Megan Youngren said she was prepared for criticism, but that she had “done everything by the book” and could show it.
She also said it was important to her that she’s open about being trans, because “that’s the only way you can make progress on stuff like this”.
As far as training goes, Youngren said “there are days when my feet are sliding around in the snow. My lungs hurt because it’s cold and I’m wearing all these layers” and it’s then that she asks herself: “Am I really getting that much faster?
“Then it warms up a bit for a day and I go, ‘Oh, my God. I am actually getting faster. This is working.’ As far as getting on the starting line in Atlanta, I am super excited because training is going so well.”
While she’s the first openly trans athlete to compete at the US Olympic marathon trials, Youngren follows in the footsteps of Chris Mosier – another US athlete and trans man who, in January 2020, made history as the first openly trans athlete to compete in a US Olympic trial.
Recently I blocked a number of people on my FB page who have attacked me personally for criticizing Bernie Sanders’s positions and record. They warn of the need to be careful not to offend Sanders voters who threaten to not vote for the Democratic nominee if it’s not Bernie. My response has been we can’t be held hostage by this group of individuals. They are the ones who should be called out for not understanding the repercussions to the programs they espouse, and democracy as we know it, if they help to reelect Trump by not voting for whoever is the Democratic nominee.
Every Democratic candidate is flawed just as every voter is flawed. Sorry Bernie Bros you aren’t perfect and neither is your vision or your candidate. Fact is each of the Democratic candidates is more progressive than Trump by a mile and support a more overall progressive agenda than any previous Democratic nominee. The issue is about scale and scope.
It is also about the American electorate. How far and how fast they are willing to support change. In many ways it is even more important to win the Congress than it is the presidency. By winning the Senate we can stop the appointment of ultra-conservative judges and if we have the Congress can stop budget cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, the dismemberment of the Environmental Protection Agency and halt future tax cuts for the rich. So it is crucial Democrats have a nominee at the head of the ticket who will not be a stone around the neck of all down ballot candidates.
Some of the online debate has been about whether we are really a socialist country because we collectively fund schools, our police, the military and programs like social security. Should we really compare ourselves to Sweden and Norway? When Sanders does that we must question whether the American electorate believes it and will vote for a candidate who is a self-declared Democratic Socialist? Will the average voter understand what socialism really is and the difference between socialism and democratic socialism? More likely they will simply fear ‘socialism’ and vote against the candidate who espouses it.
Voters will buy into the ads Trump and his acolytes will surely run attacking Sanders. Trump and his minions will never use the word Democratic along with the word socialist. Because of this each of our down-ballot candidates from school board to United States Senate will be spending half their time distancing themselves from the “socialist” at the head of our ticket if our nominee is Bernie Sanders.
Those defending Sanders keep pointing to how he polls well against Trump. What they conveniently disregard is the Republicans have yet to attack Sanders because they want to run against him. They are just waiting with baited breath and a billion dollars to go after him if he wins the nomination. While it may all be nonsense the commercials will come reminding people of how he spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, his support of the Sandinistas and Ortega in Nicaragua, and of Fidel Castro in Cuba. I won’t bother going into the nuances of his support because neither will the Republican attack machine nor will the American public.
The president will also use Sanders call for a “revolution” against him. The majority of Americans don’t want a revolution. We are seeing that even in the Democratic primary electorate. Sanders underperformed in New Hampshire by a wide margin. He even lost one of the big college towns he won in 2016. He didn’t get the big boost in Iowa failing to bring out the hordes of new voters he predicted. He is actually running second to Pete Buttigieg in the delegate count with his 21 to Pete’s 22.
In 2018 Democrats took back the House of Representatives by having moderate Democrats win in swing districts across the country. The progressives Sanders and those like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supported in those districts all lost either in a primary or in the election. Primary voters in both parties tend to be more right-wing or left-wing but the general electorate when polled show the majority are middle of the road voters. According to a Gallup poll while Democrats are more liberal Americans as a whole remained center-right ideologically and therefore to win Democratic candidates need to be more moderate. If we field those kinds of candidates we can win. Simply look at Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama as examples of how we win. The goal in 2020 must be to rid us and the world of Trump.
Peter Rosenstein is a D.C.-based LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
With the news that this weekend’s live broadcast of Super Bowl LIV will feature at least eightLGBTQ-inclusive ads, it’s fitting to pause and take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come in the struggle for LGBTQ acceptance – even if it’s only to remind ourselves that, no matter how disheartening the political tides may be, there is still reason to hope that support for the community continues to grow within the culture at large.
On Friday, GLAAD issued a statement marking what they called “an unprecedented level of LGBTQ inclusion” scheduled for Sunday’s FOX airing of the NFL championship game, as well as the milestone represented by San Francisco 49ers coach Katie Sowers, who is the first out LGBTQ woman to serve as a coach in a Super Bowl game. They also took the opportunity to give the homophobic conservative advocacy group One Million Moms a taste of their own medicine, announcing they had launched petition a calling for the organization to “call it quits.”
The statement included comments from GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, who said, “The level of diverse LGBTQ inclusion from at least seven brands during advertising’s biggest night, coupled with Katie Sowers’ trailblazing role on the field as Offensive Assistant Coach of the 49ers, mark a rainbow wave at the Super Bowl this year.”
GLAAD went on to chart some of the progress that has been made in LGBTQ representation by advertisers on the Super Bowl broadcast, citing a 2007 Snickers ad depicting two men who become disgusted when they accidentally kiss, a Coca-Cola ad from was celebrated for an ad featuring a diverse collection of American families, a Coca-Cola ad from 2014 that featured a family with two dads, and another from 2018 that used gender-neutral pronouns.
In addition, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization noted several out LGBTQ celebrities who have appeared in Super Bowl commercials over the years, such as RuPaul (who was the first drag queen to do so, twenty years ahead of this year’s ad featuring “Drag Race” alumni Kim Chi and Miz Cracker), Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris (who has appeared twice), and Carson Kressley, who co-starred with Cindy Crawford in a 2005 Diet Pepsi ad.
The brands offering this year’s eight LGBTQ inclusive ads, as noted by GLAAD, are:
Pop Tarts (with Jonathan Van Ness) Sabra (with Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, former contestants on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”) Microsoft (with 49ers coach Katie Sowers) TurboTax (with Trace Lysette and Isis King, as well as other LGBTQ members of the ballroom community) Doritos (with out Grammy-winner Lil Nas X) Olay (with Lilly Singh, out bisexual host of NBC’s “A Lilly Late with Lilly Singh,” and the host of the GLAAD Media Awards in New York on March 19) Amazon Alexa (with Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Budweiser (with married World Cup champs officially designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. In the petition, OMM raises issue to the commercial’s inclusion of drag queens Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, saying, “Normalizing this lifestyle is contrary to what conservative, Christian parents are teaching their children about God’s design for sexuality.”
In response to OMM’s latest in a long history of failed campaigns against brands that have taken steps toward LGBTQ inclusion, GLAAD announced that it has launched its own petition, blasting the organization for claiming a mission to “stop the exploitation of children” when “nearly all of their public work and actions center on targeting brands/networks that include LGBTQ people in programming or ads,” and calling on them “to pack it up and go home.”
Ellis commented, “Leading brands have learned that fringe anti-LGBTQ organizations like Monica Cole and so-called One Million Moms project of the AFA, are not a reflection of where Americans are. Family-friendly brands today include all families, including LGBTQ ones.”
When the eight scheduled LGBTQ-friendly commercials air during Sunday’s game between the 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, it will mark a record level of inclusivity for ads airing during the Super Bowl.
As Ellis puts it, “Now, American families will see and cheer on LGBTQ icons… it’s about time.”
Below, you can watch Little Nas X star opposite movie icon Sam Elliott in his Doritos ad, which will air during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast on Sunday, February 2, at 6:30pm ET.
Transgender girls and women would be barred from participating in sports on the team that aligns with their gender identity under a proposed Arizona law.
The Arizona legislation allows only biological women or girls to play on female teams, and requires a doctor’s note to prove a person is female if their birth sex is disputed. It allows lawsuits by students who believe they’ve missed opportunities because a transgender person is on a school team.
The measure is intended to prevent female athletes from being forced to compete against biological males, Barto said in a statement. It would apply to K-12 schools, community colleges and state universities but only to female teams.
She said most people view the issue as one of basic fairness.
“When this is allowed, it discourages female participation in athletics and, worse, it can result in women and girls being denied crucial educational and financial opportunities,” Barto’s statement said.
Republicans make up the majority in the state House and Senate.
Similar legislation has been proposed in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Washington state, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The measures are part of a national campaign backed by the Scottsdale-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious freedom group.
Barto said she is working with the ADF and the Center for Arizona Policy, a powerful group at the state Capitol that lobbies for religious freedom and anti-abortion legislation, to push the proposal,
Several national women’s rights and sports organizations are pushing back, saying in a letter distributed by the American Civil Liberties Union that barring transgender people from sports teams aligning with their gender identity often means they are “excluded from participating altogether.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a federal discrimination complaint on behalf of Connecticut girls who competed in track-and-field. The girls say the state’s inclusive policy on transgender athletes has cost them top finishes and possibly college scholarships.
“Forcing female athletes to compete against biological males isn’t fair and destroys their athletic opportunities,” attorney Matt Sharp, the ADF’s state government relations director told The Associated Press in an interview for a recent news report. “Likewise, every child deserves a childhood that allows them to experience puberty and other natural changes that shape who they will become.”
Conservative groups are also pushing bills that would bar doctors from providing them certain gender-related medical treatment.
The proposed laws, if enacted, “would bring devastating harms to the transgender community,” Chase Strangio, a transgender-rights lawyer with the ACLU.
“It is hard to imagine why state legislators have decided to prioritize barring transgender young people from sharing in the benefit of secondary school athletics or disrupting medical treatment consistent with prevailing standards of care,” Strangio said. “But here we are, the start of the session, a time to fight.”
The measure doesn’t apply to males, Barto said, because they are “biologically different from females in terms of bone density, lung capacity, strength, and other respects, are not disadvantaged by females in boys’ sports.”
She had no Arizona examples of girls or young women impacted but pointed to issues in Connecticut and the ADF lawsuit.
As the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day, PinkNews CEO Benjamin Cohen reflects on the persecution of gay people by the Nazis.
If I was alive 80-year-ago and living in Berlin and not London, my outlook would not have been looking good and not just because I’m Jewish. Like some of those who found themselves in concentration camps, I also have a disability, I am member of a trade union and perhaps more pertinently, like many of the people reading this article, I am gay.
More than 80 years ago, Hitler ordered the creation of a list of homosexuals, who would later find themselves persecuted. In total, during their time in power, the Nazis arrested 100,000 people for homosexuality, imprisoning half of them including up to 15,000 in concentration camps. Many of those imprisoned died, some after sickening experiments by scientists trying to find the ‘cure’ for homosexuality.
Unfortunately, when the allies liberated the concentration camps, many of the gay people who were imprisoned were not set free. Instead they were transferred to prisons, then under the control of the Allied forces. Their crime, homosexuality, something outlawed before the Nazis took power, remained on the statute book until 1968 in East Germany and 1969 in West Germany.
If I was alive 80-year-ago and living in Berlin and not London, my outlook would not have been looking good and not just because I’m Jewish.
Unlike other victims of Nazi persecution, they were not offered reparations and it took until 2002 for the German government to officially apologise for the Nazis’ crimes against gay people. Today memorials to the Nazi persecution of the gay community are found in Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Sydney and Tel Aviv.
Holocaust Memorial Day, marked today, is the opportunity to remember all of the victims of Nazi persecution. The Nazi’s rule of terror was an era that witnessed the single worst example of misery that humanity has ever inflicted on itself. Today in my view, also provides moment of reflection for what happened still in our collective lifetimes and an opportunity to galvanise us never to allow the same persecution of minority groups happen again.
I believe that as a community, should use Holocaust Memorial Day as an opportunity for us to consider, given how many countries around the world continue to criminalise or discriminate LGBT+ people, how unchallenged prejudice can quickly and dramatically escalate into unimaginable brutality.
What happened during the Holocaust also stands to us as a warning to all of us that societies can go backwards as well as forwards. In the 1920s, Berlin was one of the gay capitals of the world, where Germany’s prohibition on homosexuality was widely ignored by the police and a large, open, flourishing gay community was in existence.
It seems incredible that in 2020, 73 countries around the world would either imprison me or put me to death simply for being gay, something that I chose no more than the accident of my birth than means that I am a Jew.
Just before the Nazis took power, the German legislature was poised to repeal the legal ban of male homosexuality. It took a political climate that had nothing to do with gay people to radically alter the treatment of this minority group. The Nazis drew on deep rooted, latent homophobia within the population to stigmatise gay people to justify to ordinarily rational people the single largest act of persecution on the basis of sexuality that the world has ever seen, just as it engulfed the largest single act of anti-semitism on the planet.
What worries me is that eight decades on, as some countries such as Britain have moved forward so much with gay equality, other countries are moving backwards or have yet to move at all. Russia, which legalised homosexuality more than 20 years ago, has in recent years introduced draconian laws that severely clamp down on the rights of gay people and their families.
It seems incredible that in 2020, 73 countries around the world would either imprison me or put me to death simply for being gay, something that I chose no more than the accident of my birth than means that I am a Jew. It is clear that when it comes to gay people, at the least, there are still many lessons from the past that need to be learnt.
Once rejected from a volunteer coaching position because of her “lifestyle,” Katie Sowers will make NFL history as the first openly gay and female assistant coach headed to the Super Bowl.
Sowers is an offensive assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers, whose win against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday secured the team’s spot in the championship game Feb. 2 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. The 49ers will face off against the Kansas City Chiefs.
She is the second woman to coach in the National Football League and began her athletic career playing in the Women’s Football Alliance for the West Michigan Mayhem and the Kansas City Titans. After retiring in 2016 because of a hip injury, Sowers joined the NFL as an intern for the Atlanta Falcons, and took the assistant coach position with the 49ers the next year.
Sowers became the first out gay coach in the NFL when she came out before the 2017 season.
“No matter what you do in life, one of the most important things is to be true to who you are,” she said in an interview with Outsportsafter coming out. “There are so many people who identify as LGBT in the NFL, as in any business, that do not feel comfortable being public about their sexual orientation.”
“By standing out and proud as the first-ever openly gay NFL coach in a Super Bowl, Katie Sowers not only shows LGBTQ athletes and fans what’s possible for them, but also shows the sport world as a whole that LGBTQ people are a valuable part of this community,” Joanna Hoffman, director of communications at the national LGBTQ athletic advocacy group Athlete Ally, wrote in an emailed statement.
“The more barriers we can break down in football and in all sports, the more LGBTQ athletes, coaches and fans will be able to be who they are and be a part of the sport they love.”
Despite achieving a historic position of leadership in the highest level of national football, Sowers said she experienced LGBTQ discrimination in sports while in college, when was rejected from a volunteer coaching job because of her “lifestyle.”
“I was so passionate about coaching and to feel like my opportunities were limited because of who I loved was hard to deal with,” Sowers told Outsports. “However, without that experience, I would not be where I am today.”
The incident encouraged the coach to use her platform to promote inclusivity. Sowers was in part responsible for the genesis of a Pride fan club for the 49ers last May, the first NFL team-sponsored group that officially recognized its LGBTQ fans. She also frequently posts pictures of her with her girlfriend on Instagram and talks about her experiences being a women’s coach.
Athletes and fans are excited for Sowers’ historic role at Super Bowl LIV and have remarked that her position is especially poignant given there have only been 13 out gay and bi players in the NFL’s 100-year history, according to OutSports.
Big congrats to our friend @KatieSowers on that NFC title and for making history! She’ll be the first woman to coach at a Super Bowl. Love to see it. #BeLegendary
“Congratulations to @KatieSowers of the @49ers, who will become the first woman to coach in the #SuperBowl,” tweeted Billie Jean King, gender equality advocate in sports and a former World No. 1 professional tennis player. “You have to see it to be it!”
“Phenomenal @KatieSowers,” wrote World Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo, alongside a clapping hands emoji.
Last week, another major advancement for women in professional sports occurred when Alyssa Nakken joined the San Francisco Giants as an assistant coach, becoming the first woman to be a part of a Major League Baseball coaching staff.
Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, deadly attacks on Jewish homes, businesses, and places of worship are rocking America, from San Diego to Pittsburgh, and from Jersey City to Monsey.
Yet anti-Semitism isn’t just a clear and present danger for Jews: for millennia it has been a symptom of societies breaking down into dangerous forms of tribalism. At its root, this fight is just as much about holding up America as a pluralistic and democratic society for all – something every LGBTQ American must concern themselves with to protect and advance our rights.
Below are four important lessons we as an LGBTQ movement must learn to become effective advocates and partners in the fight against anti-Semitism.
• Jewish identity is a unique construct. Jewish identity is uniquely difficult to explain, and easy to exploit. Its complexity explains both our unique vulnerability and durability over millennia. Depending on the Jew, we are any combination of a nation, a people, a faith, a shared history, a culture, and a tradition.
No two Jews share the exact same list of Jewish attributes in the same ranking of importance. Prescribing one such description of Jewish identity to the Jewish experience as a whole is as tokenizing as a straight person prescribing what it means “to be a good queer.”
• Anti-Semitism is also a unique construct. Unlike other forms of discrimination, anti-Semitism manifests against Jews irrespective of privilege and status. The myth of Jewish wealth and elite status is centuries-old and continues to show up today, everywhere from hook-up apps like Grindr to attacks on Jews being “all about the Benjamins.” Assigning Jews with artificial privilege is dangerous to all Jews, both those with financial means and those who lack it.
White-passing Jews enjoy certain privileges – so long as they hide their stars of David from spaces like select Dyke Marches, and take off their Kippah (skull cap) on places like the Metro. Jews of Color face the additional challenge of quite often having to prove their Jewish identity to non-Jews (and sadly to many Ashkenazi Jews) simply because they don’t “look Jewish,” which in and of itself is a highly problematic construct.
• Zionism is for Jews to define. The term “queer,” once a derogatory term thrown at our community, is today an empowered identity for many. Others continue to reject it, uncomfortable with its history. How we accept or reject queer identity as LGBTQ people is for each one of us to decide – not outsiders.
The same is true for “Zionism,” the movement to re-establish an indigenous Jewish homeland. For far too long, “Zionism” has become a litmus test in LGBTQ circles and far beyond to divide “good Jews” from “bad Jews.”
Anti-Zionism, effectively the elimination of the Jewish state, would render Jews powerless orphans to an unstable world once again. Denying Jews our attachment to Israel for any reason isn’t just anti-Israel – it makes Jews feel unsafe. We as LGBTQ Americans know how it feels to be powerless.
• Anti-Semitism is not a partisan issue. Anti-Semitism is a systemic problem to be confronted everywhere. Too many left-wing Americans are content to rightly call out white nationalism, but cannot take up the work of uprooting cancerous anti-Semitism in progressive ranks. And too many right-wing Americans are rightly content to call out select anti-Zionist leaders in the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter (leaders who do not represent their movements), but fail to condemn the alt-right stirring up anti-Semitic memes online. We must have the courage to address and remove these biases from our own side of the aisle.
In the words of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov that inspired the name A Wider Bridge: “The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the most important part is not to be afraid.”
On behalf of A Wider Bridge, we invite you to join us in this urgently needed fight against hate. ACT-UP taught us that “Silence=Death.” Our shared future depends on action once more.
Tyler Gregory is executive director of A Wider Bridge.
For years the main joke about the American Family Association’s bombastically overstated One Million Moms (OMM) has involved its name itself. For obvious reasons. When an organization gives itself a grandiose name like that, the comedy is built-in.
But after a weekend where we watched a popular American brand, The Hallmark Channel, temporarily duped into believing that the organization’s constant bark was really an effective bite, it is time to move past the jokes and state the obvious about this organization: it is basically One Meddling Mom with an agenda, and no company should be giving her the credence she so desperately craves.
Her name is Monica Cole. In the decade that I have been aware of One Million Moms, she is quite literally the only staff member I have ever heard anyone name. She is the one and only person who appears on their petitions, as well as the one and only person who speaks for them to the media. She is the mom. Her. Solo. One person, supposedly representing one million.
One Meddling Mom has issued so many calls and condemnations over the years, it’s become easy to tune them out. As GLAAD has arduously detailed, OMM has gone after everything from recent blockbuster Toy Story 4 for including a seconds-long clip of a supposed lesbian couple that quite literally no one but them noticed, to Chips Ahoy for a Twitter ad featuring a Rupaul’s Drag Race star. Basically if a company hires, recognizes, features, or in any way supports an LGBTQ person, One Meddling Mom will issue a petition, claim to have millions of supporters behind her, and then start cranking the AFA machine in hopes of getting some sort of press for her campaign-of-the-week. OMM even uses a conservative PR firm, Hamilton Strategies, to help spread this message to a wider public.
Sadly, because nonsense will forever grab headlines, OMM is pretty capable when it comes to getting ink. It’s typically dismissive, if not outright derisive, press. Most often the anti-LGBTQ campaign to which it is attached goes absolutely nowhere and the company under attack continues right along serving its entire customer base rather than cutting out the share that AFA/OMM believes to be anti-godly mistakes. Still, Monica Cole and her minuscule operation that masquerades as “millions” does get people talking.
It’s easy to be fooled into thinking the organization is larger than it is. But let’s look at some evidence:
The Internet ranking site Alexa (not to be confused with your in-home listening device) gives OneMillionMoms.com a ranking of #1,133,944 in global internet engagement. That is extremely low. For comparison’s sake, GLAAD’s own page has a ranking that is ten times higher ranking than theirs.
One Million Moms has only 4,200 Twitter followers. Sure, not everyone uses social media, and it might even be fair to say that OMM’s target audience uses it at a lower rate. But 4,200 followers? For a squad of supposedly one million? That follow rate doesn’t add up.
Searching social media, it is really hard to find prominent voices speaking out in favor of OMM’s campaigns. You can find all kinds of pro-LGBTQ people pushing back against OMM, in ways ranging from funny to snarky to serious to whatever unclassifiable thing Cole Escola does. But even though Social Conservative Twitter is a reliably outspoken bunch, it’s pretty tough to find any sort of goodwill support for OMM. That would not be the case if they had anywhere near the support base they claim to have.
American Family Association petitions have been skewed for years. Regardless of how you fill out an AFA petition, they will count you as a supporter. So if you weigh in with pushback, thinking you are going to open their eyes and change their minds, you will simply get a “Thank you for supporting us!” and your reply will be counted as support. I still get emails addressed to “Mr. Stop Hating,” the name I used for an AFA petition that I “supported” (read: trolled) a full fifteen years ago. So whenever they say they have X number of signatures, you can be sure that a sizable percentage are people who wanted to deliver a message on a forum where the petition is the only open communication channel.
Every once in a while, a company allows itself to be deafened by the bark, believing it to instead be bite. That’s what happened with The Hallmark Channel before they reversed course. Because of these minor “victories,” Monica Cole and her PR arm are able to push the illusion even further.
But an illusion it is, and we need to call it out. Here on the side of equality, our ranks are much larger, our voices are much louder, and our cause is infinitely more righteous. And many of us are moms and dads ourselves, and we know that Monica Cole’s crude bigotry is not a family value. It is time we tell One Meddling Mom to not only stop attacking our families, but to also stop bearing false witness about her operation.
Rugby player Israel Folau has drawn anger for linking Australia’s bushfire crisis to the nation’s same-sex marriage and abortion laws. Folau, who was sacked by Australia in May for making anti-gay remarks on social media, described the fires as a “little taste of God’s judgement”.
Six people have died since last month in blazes raging in eastern Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison condemned Folau’s remarks as “appallingly insensitive”.
“He is a free citizen, he can say whatever he likes but that doesn’t mean he can’t have regard to the grievance [and] offence this would have caused to the people whose homes have burnt down,” Mr Morrison told reporters on Monday.
During the 10-minute recording, the 30-year-old says the timing of the bushfire crisis is no coincidence but only a taste of God’s judgment should nothing change. “I’ve been looking around at the events that’s been happening in Australia, this past couple of weeks, with all the natural disasters, the bushfires and the droughts,” he says.
He then reads from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible: “The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.”
Folau links the passage to the twin disasters of bushfire and drought and, in turn, the legalising of same-sex marriage and abortion. “God is speaking to you guys. Australia you need to repent and take these laws and turn it back to what is right.”
Hockey player Harrison Browne, thought to be the first openly transgender athlete in any professional U.S. team sport, didn’t have many trans athletes to look up to when he was growing up.
Then he saw Chris Mosier, a pioneering transgender triathlete being true to himself: “a trans athlete while still being a triathlete,” Browne said. “For me, when you see it, you can be it.”
When Browne came out as transgender in 2016 while playing for the Buffalo Beauts, a team within the National Women’s Hockey League, he said he had “a flood of people reaching out to me on social media saying, “It’s amazing to see you play your sport and be yourself.” His desire to take part in that type of positive representation is what drew Browne to play on a historic all-trans hockey team, which competed this past weekend in Massachusetts: Team Trans vs. Boston Pride Hockey.
The friendship tournament, played in Cambridge, was hosted by Boston Pride Hockey, an LGBTQ intramural organization that has both cisgender and transgender members. The game came about after a trans player reached out to Boston Pride Hockey and asked about its friendship series with the New York City Gay Hockey Association, which led to a conversation leading to the game.
Earlier this year, Hutch Hutchinson, who played defense on Team Trans, and New York player Aidan Cleary discussed how they wanted to create a space just for transgender athletes. Cleary contacted Boston Pride Hockey Vice President Mark Tikonoff about how they might recruit a full team of trans players.
“We have a few trans members, but not enough to make an entire team, so we started to reach out — to other cities we play with in national tournaments — San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Canada — to see if there were other players who might be interested in something like this.” Tikonoff said.
Hutch Hutchinson and Shane Diamond, players on Team Trans for the Boston Pride Hockey League.Courtesy of Kyle Outlaw
After receiving a strong response, the group organized the event, secured the space and raised funds to make sure the tournament went off without a hitch.
“For us, we didn’t realize how much we had in common, and we didn’t realize — I’m speaking personally — how much this community was underserved,” Tikonoff said. “As a cis gay man going into a locker room with other cis gay men, I don’t fear for my safety and I don’t fear judgment and I don’t fear exposing part of myself to people.”
While Team Trans lost to Boston Pride Hockey in both of the weekend games, Hutchinson said it was “an honor” to play alongside Browne and Jessica Platt — the two professional hockey players who competed in the weekend tournament. “The common thread was we have all never been on an all-trans team, and we have all gone through the struggle of ‘Where do I belong?’” Hutchinson said.
“We as trans people fight either big battles or little battles every day,” Hutchinson said. “This was an opportunity to walk into a locker room, and we didn’t have to explain anything to each other — we’re here, we are trans, this is great.”
Platt, a transgender woman who played with the Toronto Furies in the Canadian Women’s Hockey Players Association before it went out of business, said that being out and trans in a professional sport is “a really lonely experience.”
“There are not a lot of out trans athletes playing professional sports, and there are few in professional women’s sports,” Platt said. “I think that’s partially due to the fact that there’s a lot of negativity surrounding trans women participating in professional sports.”
“Growing up, I always played boys hockey and it didn’t feel like a safe atmosphere for me,” Platt said. “I knew there was something different about me but I always tried to be who I needed to be to fit in because I saw anyone who didn’t quite fit in the male hockey atmosphere got made fun of pretty harshly, so I didn’t want to be that person.” And yet she persisted, because she loves to play the sport.
Platt said that if presented with the opportunity to play forward on Team Trans again, she’d do it. “It was such a special experience for me, it was such a positive and supportive environment, I feel like everyone had no problem being themselves.”
Once the players hit the ice, it was easy playing the game they all know and love.
“A lot folks that I played with this weekend, we put years of our lives into practicing our sports and then we came out as trans and found there’s not necessarily a space for us in that sport anymore,” Hutchinson said. “I think that what happened this weekend it was important on individual levels — for me personally, it was like a full honoring of my identity: I am a trans hockey player and I am on a trans team.”
For her part, Platt said she hoped that the tournament would open more people’s minds to the fact that transgender athletes work hard and compete fairly just like cisgender athletes.
“We need more knowledge, more education, and for people to go into these things with an open mind and be willing to learn something that they might not be familiar with.”
