Sports

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Va. senator introduces anti-transgender student athlete bill

A Virginia lawmaker has introduced a bill that would ban transgender students from joining school sports teams that are consistent with their gender identity. Senate Bill 766, which state Sen. Jennifer Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach) introduced on Friday, would require “each elementary or secondary school or a private school that competes in sponsored athletic events against such public schools to designate athletic teams, whether a school athletic team or an intramural team sponsored by such school, based on biological sex as follows: (i) ‘males,’ ‘men,’ or ‘boys’; (ii) ‘females,’ ‘women,’ or ‘girls’; or (iii) ‘coed’ or ‘mixed.’” “Under the bill, male students […]

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NCAA adopts new policy for transgender athletes

The NCAA has adopted a sport-by-sport approach for transgender athletes, bringing the organization in line with the U.S. and International Olympic Committees. Under the new guidelines, approved by the NCAA Board of Governors on Wednesday, transgender participation for each sport will be determined by the policy for the sport’s national governing body, subject to review and recommendation by an NCAA committee to the Board of Governors. When there is no national governing body, that sport’s international federation policy would be in place. If there is no international federation policy, previously established IOC policy criteria would take over. “Approximately 80% of […]

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Champion bodybuilder and first Black gay man to win Mr America dies

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Chris Dickerson, who holds the duel honour of being the first Black man to win the Mr America contest and first openly gay man to win Mr Olympia, has died aged 82. Dickerson was a powerhouse of the bodybuilding community and broke barriers. He died on 23 December at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with his friend Bill Neylon confirming the cause of death as a heart ailment, the Washington Post reported. Neylon – a retired amateur bodybuilder who trained alongside Dickerson – said his friend had lived in a rehab centre after he had been hospitalised for a broken hip in […]

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Winter Olympics poised to be gayest ever as another queer athlete qualifies

Another queer Team USA athlete has just qualified for the Winter Olympics – skeleton slider Andrew Blaser. Blaser beat out skeleton veterans Austin Florian and John Daly to become the only man on the Team USA skeleton team for the 2022 games in Beijing. It’s the first time that the US is sending only one male skeleton athlete to the Olympics – so no pressure at all. The truly terrifying winter sport involves sledders plummeting head-first down a steep and perilous icy track on a tiny sled. According to the Olympics website, it is considered to be the “world’s first sliding […]

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Out Brazilian Olympic diver Ian Matos dies aged 32

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Openly gay Brazilian Olympic diver Ian Matos died aged 32 following a severe infection that left him hospitalised. Matos had been in hospital for two months before his condition worsened on Wednesday (22 December), the Sun reported. He had initially sought treatment because of an infection in his throat which later spread to his stomach and lungs. He had won three bronze medals in the 2010 South American Games. He placed eighth in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro where he competed in the men’s synchronised three-metre springboard alongside his diving partner Luiz Outerelo. Brazil’s Olympic Committee said in a statement […]

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Ivy League swimming champion becomes target of anti-trans rhetoric

A swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania is the latest target in the culture-war debate over whether transgender girls and women should be allowed to participate on female sports teams.  Lia Thomas, who came out as trans in 2019, set three school records and two national records at a meet this month.  Since then, Thomas has faced criticism and verbal attacks from anti-trans groups, conservative media and, reportedly, even two teammates. Some of the headlines about Thomas’ wins said she “smashed” the records and continued her “dominant” season alongside pre-transition photos of her and using her previous name and male […]

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Carl Nassib designed rainbow cleats to support the LGBTQ community

Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib, who became the first openly gay active NFL player in June, helped design custom, rainbow cleats to raise awareness and money for the LGBTQ community. In participation with the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats fundraiser, Nassib created the rainbow cleats this season to spotlight the LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization the Trevor Project. As part of the campaign, players can custom design their own cleats to raise awareness for the nonprofit organizations of their choice. Players then auction off the cleats to raise money for the groups. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/mQeU0Lh?_showcaption=true&app=1 Cyd Zeigler, LGBTQ advocate […]

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Gay Games should boycott Hong Kong over Peng Shuai

There are many reasons to boycott China, not least of which is its treatment of the Uyghurs; an unofficial U.K. tribunal this week said Chinese President Xi Jinping is responsible for “genocide, crimes against humanity and torture” of minorities in Xinjiang.  Add to the list the mysterious and alarming case of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who disappeared for two weeks after publicly accusing Zhang Gaoli, a member of China’s ruling committee, of sexual assault. Within 20 minutes of her post on China’s equivalent of Twitter, government censors scrambled to scrub any mention of it from the Internet, as the […]

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LGBT Qataris Call Foul Ahead of 2022 World Cup

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As Qatar prepares to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the government has assured prospective visitors it will welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) tourists and that fans will be free to fly the rainbow flag at the games. But for LGBT Qataris like Mohammed, openly expressing his sexuality as a gay man is not an option. Doing so, he fears, would land him back in jail.  Mohammed was arrested in 2014 for alleged same-sex conduct, punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment under article 285 of Qatar’s penal code. While in detention, officers searched his phone, identified a man he’d been messaging, and attempted […]

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LGBT+ football fans ‘will be welcome’ in Qatar for World Cup, FA insists as criticism mounts

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LGBT+ football fans “will be welcome” at next year’s World Cup in Qatar, England’s Football Association chief has insisted. Qatar, chief executive Mark Bullingham said, has made “strong progress” in addressing a raft of human rights issues that have battered FIFA. The 2022 World Cup will be the first one held in the Arab world and has been a hot-button issue since Qatar won the hosting rights in 2010. Among them in the last decade of controversy and scandal: accusations of corruption, the cost, the emirate’s treatment of migrant workers, women and LGBT+ people. But for queer football fans, they […]

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