National
Yogi Berra lends name to sports equality movement
Straight allies partnering with LGBT groups to combat discrimination
In a little-noticed development, famed New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra agreed last year to become a ceremonial ambassador for Athlete Ally, an organization that partners with big name sports figures to advocate for full acceptance of LGBT athletes in professional sports.
In addition to allowing Athlete Ally to use his name in promoting LGBT equality, the nationally acclaimed baseball Hall of Famer embraced a proposal to include an LGBT exhibit in the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center located on the campus of Montclair State University in New Jersey.
āYogi is a wonderful example making good choices,ā said David Kaplan, executive director of the Berra Museum. āAll of our programs and exhibits are about fairness and respect. And our involvement with Athlete Ally and shedding some light on this cause was just so consistent with our mission,ā he said.
Berra declined an interview request, due to health issues.
Athlete Ally is among at least a dozen organizations that have either sprung up or expanded their mission in the past several years to take on the cause of LGBT athletes in American sports, both on the professional level and on the high school and college level.
Sam Marchiano, Athlete Allyās outreach director, said Berra is one of 100 professional athlete ambassadors the group has lined up to advocate on behalf of LGBT equality. She said another 100 college athlete ambassadors have been recruited.
Photos of many of them, including Berra, are prominently featured on the groupās website along with the text of a pledge that Athlete Ally asks all of its allies to sign.
āI pledge to lead my athletic community to respect and welcome all persons, regardless of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression,ā the pledge says. āBeginning right now, I will do my part to promote the best of athletics by making all players feel respected on and off the field,ā it says.
Cyd Zeigler, co-founder and editor of Out Sports, an online publication that reports on LGBT people in sports, said Athlete Ally is the only organization that currently operates exclusively as a straight ally group.
He noted that all the others, including longtime existing groups like Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, have sports-related programs that work with straight allies but are focused mostly on LGBT athletes.
According to Zeigler, the growing number of professional athletes that have come out as gay or lesbian in recent years has begun to change the focus of what he calls the LGBT sports movement from supportive allies to LGBT athletes themselves.
āI come from the perspective that straight allies are fading very quickly into the distance of this movement because there are so many LGBT athletes and LGBT people who are joining the sports movement that straight allies just arenāt needed anymore,ā he said.
David McFarland, executive director of United for Equality in Sports and Entertainment, and Wade Davis, executive director of You Can Play Project, two recently formed groups that advocate for LGBT athletes, each agree that the growing number of LGBT athletes coming out publicly is an encouraging development.
But the two also said the number of LGBT athletes coming out is far less than what it should be and that most LGBT athletes on the high school, college and professional level remain reluctant to self-identify as LGBT.
āWhile many of the most powerful sports institutions have made great strides to publicly support and embrace LGBT equality such as the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, etc., the truth is that sexual orientation and gender identity remain problematic for many of these organizations within sports at all levels,ā McFarland said.
āThatās the reality,ā he said. āIf this were not the case we would see hundreds if not thousands of LGBT athletes on the playing fields,ā said McFarland. āAnd we would see many more coaches and sports administrators that felt safe enough to come out without the risk of losing their jobs.ā
Davis is gay and a former NFL player who, among other teams, played for the Washington Redskins. He said he knows of a number of professional athletes in several different sports that are out to their teammates but are not out publicly.
Davis and McFarland said their respective groups either currently provide or plan to provide educational resources, including training sessions, for players and coaches to dispel myths about LGBT people and lessen the fears and underlying feelings that make it hard for LGBT athletes to come out.
Another of the newer generation of advocacy groups for LGBT athletes is āGo! Athletes,ā which consists of a nationwide network of mostly LGBT student athletes and their straight allies. With members in cities throughout the country, the group, which was founded in 2008, has been āspreading the word about LGBT athletes and our experiences with coming out, receiving support, fighting homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and other anti-LGBT discrimination in the world of athletics,ā a statement on the groupās website says.
The website says Georgetown University student Craig Casey Jr., whoās gay and was elected as an Advisory Neighborhood Commission member, serves as a Go! Athletes Collegiate Ambassador for Washington, D.C.
The group Br{ache the Silence also works with LGBT student athletes in its mission to āshift the focus from homophobia to inclusion,ā it says on its website, freedomsounds.org.
āBr{ache the Silence (BST) advances LGBTQ inclusion in sports through professional college campus integration initiatives and public awareness campaigns,ā a message on the website says.
The New York-based Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) advocates for LGBT youth in school sports programs beginning in grades K through 12 through its Changing the Game Project. Among other things, the project works with gym teachers and school athletic programs to curtail and eliminate anti-LGBT bias targeting students.
āWhat you see at the pro level really starts in kindergarten and on the playground in recess time,ā GLSEN official Robert McGarry told the Blade in a past interview. āWeāve been doing training across the country with mostly high school coaches and physical education teachers who seem very receptive and anxious to have this kind of training because itās not something they get in their preparation and they donāt know what to do.ā
GLAAD spokesperson Rich Ferraro said GLAAD for several years now has worked closely with major league sports organizations to persuade them to adopt internal non-discrimination polices protecting LGBT athletes. Virtually all of them have done so, including Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.
Ferraro said the GLAAD sports project has also lobbied professional sports leagues and teams to make public statements endorsing LGBT equality and condemning anti-LGBT bullying. In response to efforts by GLAAD and other groups, the New York Yankees recently adopted a strict policy prohibiting homophobic taunts and chants by fans at Yankee Stadium during games that calls for ejecting those who violate the policy, Ferraro said.
In its Athletes for Equality program, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation draws attention to LGBT rights by arranging for runners, both LGBT and straight, to participate in marathon races to raise money for the HRC Foundation, according to foundation official Jay Brown.
Brown said HRC sponsored a marathon and half marathon in Akron, Ohio, earlier this month as part of the Gay Games. He said Athletes for Equality will be participating in October in the annual Marine Corps Marathon in D.C.
Zeigler said another recent addition to the LGBT sports advocacy scene was the creation in 2012 by leaders of these and other groups of the LGBT Sports Coalition, which serves as an association of organizations and individuals working to end anti-LGBT bias in sports by 2016.
Last October, Nike Corporation, which bills itself as the worldās largest sports company, donated $200,000 to the LGBT Sports Coalition, expressing strong support for the coalitionās efforts to end bias and discrimination in sports.
Following is a partial list of LGBT athlete advocacy groups.
Athlete Ally
Changing the Game Project
You Can Play Project
United for Equality in Sports and Entertainment
Outsports
GLAAD Sports Project
Go! Athletes
Br{ache the Silence
Homophobia in Sports Project
LGBT Sports Coalition
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court declines to hear case over drag show at Texas university
Students argue First Amendment protects performance
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a First Amendment case over a public university president’s refusal to allow an LGBTQ student group to host a drag show on campus.
The group’s application was denied without the justices providing their reasoning or issuing dissenting opinions, as is custom for such requests for emergency review.
When plaintiffs sought to organize the drag performance to raise money for suicide prevention in March 2023, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler cancelled the event, citing the Bible and other religious texts.
The students sued, arguing the move constituted prior restraint and viewpoint-based discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment. Wendler had called drag shows āderisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny,” adding that “a harmless drag show” was “not possible.”
The notoriously conservative Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who former President Donald Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled against the plaintiffs in September, writing that āit is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.”
Kacsmaryk further argued that the High Court’s precedent-setting opinions protecting stage performances and establishing that “speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend” was inconsistent with constitutional interpretation based on ātext, history and tradition.”
Plaintiffs appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is by far the most conservative of the nation’s 12 appellate circuit courts. They sought emergency review by the Supreme Court because the 5th Circuit refused to fast-track their case, so arguments were scheduled to begin after the date of their drag show.
Federal Government
EXCLUSIVE: USAID LGBTQ coordinator visits Uganda
Jay Gilliam met with activists, community members from Feb. 19-27
U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam last month traveled to Uganda.
Gilliam was in the country from Feb. 19-27. He visited Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and the nearby city of Jinja.
Gilliam met with LGBTQ activists who discussed the impact of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a law with a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality” that President Yoweri Museveni signed last May. Gilliam also sat down with USAID staffers.
Gilliam on Wednesday during an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade did not identify the specific activists and organizations with whom he met “out of protection.”
“I really wanted to meet with community members and understand the impacts on them,” he said.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations in Uganda were already criminalized before Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Gilliam told the Blade he spoke with a person who said authorities arrested them at a community meeting for mental health and psychosocial support “under false pretenses of engaging in same-sex relations and caught in a video that purportedly showed him.”
The person, according to Gilliam, said authorities outed them and drove them around the town in which they were arrested in order to humiliate them. Gilliam told the Blade that prisoners and guards beat them, subjected them to so-called anal exams and denied them access to antiretroviral drugs.
“They were told that you are not even a human being. From here on you are no longer living, just dead,” recalled Gilliam.
“I just can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to be able to live through something like that and being released and having ongoing needs for personal security, having to be relocated and getting support for that and lots of other personal issues and trauma,” added Gilliam.
Gilliam said activists shared stories of landlords and hotel owners evicting LGBTQ people and advocacy groups from their properties. Gilliam told the Blade they “purport that they don’t want to run afoul of” the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
“These evictions really exacerbate the needs from the community in terms of relocation and temporary shelter and just the trauma of being kicked out of your home, being kicked out of your village and having to find a place to stay at a moment’s notice, knowing that you’re also trying to escape harm and harassment from neighbors and community members,” he said.
Gilliam also noted the Anti-Homosexuality Act has impacted community members in different ways.
Reported cases of violence and eviction, for example, are higher among gay men and transgender women. Gilliam noted lesbian, bisexual and queer women and trans men face intimate partner violence, are forced into marriages, endure corrective rape and lose custody of their children when they are outed. He said these community members are also unable to inherit land, cannot control their own finances and face employment discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.Ā Ā
US sanctioned Ugandan officials over Anti-Homosexuality Act
The U.SĀ imposed visa restrictionsĀ on Ugandan officials shortly after Museveni signed the law. The World Bank Group later announcedĀ the suspension of new loansĀ to Uganda.
The Biden-Harris administration last October issued a business advisory that said the Anti-Homosexuality Act āfurther increases restrictions on human rights, to include restrictions on freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly and exacerbates issues regarding the respect for leases and employment contracts.ā The White House has also removed Uganda from a program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to trade duty-free with the U.S. and has issued a business advisory for the country over the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Dec. 4, 2023, announced sanctions against current and former Ugandan officials who committed human rights abuses against LGBTQ people and other groups. Media reports this week indicate the U.S. denied MP Sarah Achieng Opendi a visa that would have allowed her to travel to New York in order to attend the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
Museveni, for his part, has criticized the U.S. and other Western countries’ response to the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Gilliam noted authorities have arrested and charged Ugandans under the law.Ā
Two men on motorcycles on Jan. 3 stabbed Steven Kabuye, co-executive director of Coloured Voice Truth to LGBTQ Uganda, outside his home while he was going to work. The incident took place months after Museveni attended Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast at which U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) spoke and defended the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
The State Department condemned the attack that Kabuye blamed on politicians and religious leaders who are stoking anti-LGBTQ sentiments in Uganda. Gilliam did not meet with Ugandan government officials while he was in the country.
“We in the U.S. government have already made it clear our stance with government officials on how we feel about the AHA, as well as broader human rights concerns in country,” said Gilliam. “That’s been communicated from the very highest levels.”
The Uganda’s Constitutional Court last Dec. 18 heard arguments in a lawsuit that challenges the Anti-Homosexuality Act. It is unclear when a ruling in the case will take place, but Gilliam said LGBTQ Ugandans with whom he met described the law “as just one moment.”
“Obviously there is lots of work that has been done, that continues to be done to respond to this moment,” he told the Blade. “They know that there’s going to be a lot of work that needs to continue to really address a lot of the root causes and to really back humanity to the community.”
Gilliam further noted it will “take some years to recover from the damage of 2023 and the AHA (Anti-Homosexuality Act) there.” He added activists are “already laying down the groundwork for what that work looks like” in terms of finding MPs, religious leaders, human rights activists and family members who may become allies.
“Those types of allyships are going to be key to building back the community and to continue the resiliency of the movement,” said Gilliam.
Texas
Pornhub blocks Texas accessing site over age verification law
Court battle forced statute to take effect
Aylo (formerly MindGeek) the largest global adult online entertainment conglomerate, owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, has restricted access to its platforms including its flagship Pornhub in Texas after a court battle forces the state’s age verification law to take effect.
Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had appealed a U.S. District Court decision that enjoined him from enforcing House Bill 1181. Paxton and others argued that purveyors of obscene materials online needed to institute reasonable age-verification measures to safeguard children from pornography.Ā
A week ago the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially vacated the original injunction, ruling that the age verification requirements are constitutional.Ā
āApplying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the governmentās legitimate interest in preventing minorsā access to pornography,ā the three judge panel of the 5th Circuit explained. āTherefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.ā
While the court vacated the injunction against the age-verification requirement of the statute, it upheld the lower courtās injunction against a separate section of the law that would require pornography websites to display a health warning on their landing page and all advertisements.
The Houston Chronicle reported people who go to the site are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as āineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.ā The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites.
Age verification legislation was enacted in several states in 2023 in addition to Texas, including North Carolina, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and Virginia.
The new laws require users to provide digital confirmation via a certified approved third party vendor like London-based digital identity company Yoti. The other possibility would be a state approved digital ID such as the California DMVās Wallet app, which contains a mobile driverās license.
Users accessing Pornhub from within Louisiana are presented with a different webpage that directs them to verify their age with the stateās digital ID system, known as LA Wallet. The law passed in 2022 subjects adult websites to damage lawsuits and state civil penalties as high as $5,000 a day if they fail to verify that users are at least 18 years old by requiring the use of digitized, state-issued driverās licenses or other methods.
The Associated Press reported this past October that an adult entertainment groupās lawsuit against a Louisiana law requiring sexually explicit websites to verify the ages of their viewers was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan in New Orleans.
Potential or existing Pornhub users in North Carolina and Montana are directed to a video that features adult film star Cherie DeVille, who recites a message also written under the video.
āAs you may know, your elected officials in your state are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.ā
āMandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply,ā the statement continues. āAs weāve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.ā
āUntil a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in [the aforementioned locales]ā the message ends with.
The company previously blocked Utah on May 7, 2023. CNN reported at the time:
Affected users are shown a message expressing opposition toĀ Senate Bill 287, the Utah law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in March that creates liability for porn sites that make their content available to people below the age of 18.
āAs you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,ā the message said. āWhile safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.ā
Courthouse News reportedĀ that after Virginiaās bill was passed in June, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the state for not creating a system for age verification, and instead leaving it up to websites to manage the process, citing security risks.Ā Ā
āWe passed a bill during this session to protect children from online porn. However the executive branch had an obligation to create a system for age verification,āĀ Lucas saidĀ on X, formerly Twitter. āWe will continue our work to keep pornography out of the hands of minors ā¦ but we will also work to ensure that this Governorās error does not put the privacy of Virginians at further risk.ā
Beyond the U.S. in the European Union, Pornhub and two more of the worldās biggest porn websites face new requirements in the European Union that include verifying the ages of users, under the EUās Digital Services Act.
According to a December 20 report from the Associated Press, Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat have now been classed as āvery large online platformsā subject to more stringent controls under the Digital Services Act because they each have 45 million average monthly users, according to the European Commission, the EUās executive branch.
They are the first porn sites to be targeted by the sweeping Digital Services Act, which imposes tough obligations to keep users safe from illegal content and dodgy products, the Associated Press reported last month.
In addition to the adult entertainment websites, any violations are punishable by fines of up to 6% of global revenue or even a ban on operating in the EU. Some 19 online platforms and search engines have already been identified for stricter scrutiny under the DSA, including TikTok, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google and more.
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