Sports
Sam the Ram
Out player causing buzz beyond usual football circles
Michael Sam was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in February. The team’s regular season starts Sept. 7. (Photo by Marcus Qwertyus; courtesy Wikimedia Commons).
With the football pre-season in full swing, many eyes are on Michael Sam, the defensive end for the St. Louis Rams who in February became the first out gay player to be drafted by the NFL.
Though the Rams have lost their first two pre-season games (they face the Cleveland Browns Saturday), buzz is strong for their prospects this year. ESPN analysts said they could emerge as a “sleeper” for the NFC West this year, they’re “primed to explode” and this fall is, in an ironic choice of words, “looking very much like their coming-out party.” Their first regular season game is Sept. 7 when they play the Minnesota Vikings at Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis at noon. It will be televised on Fox.
With Sam in the mix, the team is garnering attention beyond the usual sphere of fans. Almost everyone agrees, regardless of how Sam or the Rams do this year, his presence is a big deal.
Bruce Hobson, a St. Louis attorney and Rams fan, says the February news resonated strongly with him since he, like Sam, competed for the University of Missouri (Hobson swam).
“I was just sort of shocked,” said Hobson, who’s gay. “I remember I was in the airport waiting for a connecting flight and watching the ESPN alert on my iPad and I was like, ‘Oh wait a minute, that’s the guy from University of Missouri.’ I thought this was really cool that he would do that. … I had played for University of Missouri in scholarship. I was not really out but not really in either, so it had even more of a resonance for me having been a University of Missouri gay athlete.”
Hobson said buzz about Sam has been strong in St. Louis and that although the Cardinals dominate the local sports discussion there, Sam’s presence is high in the public consciousness.
“There was lots of, ‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful,’ and people talking who don’t have much interest in football suddenly were interested,” he said.
A.J. Bockelman, executive director of PROMO, Missouri’s statewide LGBT rights group, agreed.
“There’s an incredible amount of buzz coalescing around the idea that St. Louis has its first gay celebrity in Michael Sam,” Bockelman said. “When he made his debut in a practice game, it was very well received and from what I understand, whenever he walked on the field, the entire crowd shouted his name so I think what that shows is that for St. Louis, we’re ready for someone like Michael Sam to be on the stage and probably bring a lot more attention. It’s a lot different than if he’d been picked up by, say New York or Los Angeles. Lots of people think of Missouri as just some place you fly over, and this will help us break down that perception.”
Matt Berger, a crisis communications consultant and football fan who lives in Washington, said Sam’s coming out is historic.
“It just felt to me like a tougher barrier than a lot of other sports,” said Berger, who’s gay. “It felt more significant to me than Jason Collins and that’s what I liked about it. Here was this guy who wasn’t just an ancillary player. He was a star. He had played on a major team, he had won defensive MVP honors. It wasn’t just a guy on the sidelines. This was somebody people could really look up to and that made a big difference for me.”
Hobson said the nature of football as a team sport adds to the magnitude of the moment.
“It’s a culture that can be very tough,” he said. “Not just the physical nature of the sport but with the ostracization factor that can occur. It’s not like swimming where you only have to rely on yourself. … You might get tackled harder, you could be seen as the weak link on the team and they could make your life hell. You might pay a price and I’m sure there are many who would say it’s not worth the risk. That’s why this is so important and a much bigger deal than, say, a women’s basketball player or somebody who comes out at the end of their career. It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, I’m gay,’ on your way out the door when you’re already established. But to do this when there’s still so much at stake in your career, when nothing’s a done deal, that’s why it’s so historic.”
Sports
US wins Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey
Team captain Hilary Knight proposed to girlfriend on Wednesday
The U.S. women’s hockey team on Thursday won a gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime. The game took place a day after Team USA captain Hilary Knight proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
Cayla Barnes and Alex Carpenter — Knight’s teammates — are also LGBTQ. They are among the more than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes who are competing in the games.
The Olympics will end on Sunday.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
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