Sports
‘Ambassador’ Bean
A Billy Bean interview in advance of Night OUT
Former Major League Baseball player Billy Bean will be at Night OUT next week. (Photo courtesy Bean)
Last month’s heckling of the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus at a Padres game may have given the community a collective, social media-infused “WTF” moment, but while it was certainly embarrassing for the singers, it appears to have been more of a snafu than a malicious joke.
DJ Artform was in the booth when the music started. He says the chorus planned to sing along to their own recording of the piece but he accidentally played the wrong recording.
“In a moment of panic I went to the first thing I saw that said anthem and unfortunately the female vocal artist is what played over the PA system and it was an extremely embarrassing moment,” he said later. “Those are my mistakes and I own up to them. I hold myself accountable. My stomach was in knots. I should have intervened. I should have turned it down. There’s a lot of ‘coulda, woulda, shouldas’ that we could have done to avoid the incident. … My heart was racing. Every second was an hour.”
Roughly 100 choir members were on the field and they were subsequently escorted off amidst homophobic heckling from fans.
Major League Baseball (MLB) immediately launched an investigation and found the incident to be an unintentional mistake. MLB ramped up its efforts to address social conscience in 2014 when organizers hired Billy Bean as their ambassador for inclusion. He has since segued into the role of vice president of social responsibility and inclusion. Bean came out as gay in 1999, four years after his final season as an MLB player.
“I have a lot of friends in San Diego and they were texting me in real time while the incident was happening,” Bean says. “I am relieved that everyone understands that it was an unfortunate mistake.”
Social media quickly picked up on what happened and it was covered on all major news outlets. Everyone was looking for an explanation.
“The most frustrating thing was that the MLB investigation took close to four days and we were not able to communicate with anyone on the topic during that time,” Bean says. “The immediacy of people’s desire to get to the bottom of things really speaks to the nature of how quickly people find out and want an answer.”
Bean’s duties with MLB go well beyond the LGBT community and include other areas of social responsibility including life skills, issues with domestic violence, work with urban youth academies and owner’s diversity committees.
“The closer we get to MLB players, the faster the message gets to the fans. It’s the way the world works now,” Bean says. “Being the best product for our fans is very important. We wouldn’t have a platform to get the message out without being such a great product.”
With everything being tracked these days on social media, MLB players find themselves in a situation where their words and actions are representative of the team for which they are playing.
“I encourage everyone I meet with to leave baseball better than it was when they started,” Bean says. “I try to show them situations where they will feel some correlation to the LGBT community.”
When Team D.C. held its second Night OUT at the Nationals event in 2006, organizers asked to bring in the Washington Gay Men’s Chorus and were met with reluctance by MLB, club owners at that time.
“MLB had never heard of the Washington Gay Men’s Chorus which showed how uninformed they were about the LGBT community at that time,” says Brent Minor, executive director of Team D.C. “These LGBT community nights are important parts of educating the larger community about us including the fact that we are very enthusiastic sports fans.”
This year’s line-up of guests at Night OUT at the Nationals is an indication as to how far MLB has come in terms of inclusion.
“The journey we have been on has been filled with obstacles but today we are not getting resistance from my sport,” Bean says. “We have been handed a platform and we have to capitalize on it.”
Night OUT at the Nationals will be held on Tuesday, June 14 as the Washington Nationals take on the Chicago Cubs.
This year’s line-up includes:
MLB’s Billy Bean — special guest
Actor Leslie Jordan — first pitch
Bishop Gene Robinson — line-up cards
Congresswoman Krysten Sinema — play ball announcement
Washington Gay Men’s Chorus — National anthem (Live)
Singer Ty Herndon — With the chorus and soloing on “Take Me Out”
Spirit Award — Mona Alcazar. Accepted by her wife, Nancy Bates
If the umpire rotation stays on schedule, MLB’s first openly gay umpire, Dale Scott, will be handling home plate duties.
Sports
Blade, Pride House LA announce 2028 Olympics partnership
Media sponsorship to amplify stories of LGBTQ athletes
The Los Angeles Blade and Washington Blade on Friday announced a media partnership with the Out Athlete Fund, which will produce Pride House LA for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Pride House is the home for LGBTQ fans and athletes that will become a destination during the L.A. Summer Games in West Hollywood in partnership with the City of WeHo. This 17-day celebration for LGBTQ athletes and fans will include medal ceremonies for out athletes, interactive installations, speakers, concerts, and more.
The Los Angeles Blade will serve as the exclusive L.A.-area queer media sponsor for Pride House LA and the Washington Blade will support the efforts and amplify coverage of the 2028 Games.
The Blade will provide exclusive coverage of Pride House plans, including interviews with queer athletes and more. The parties will share content and social media posts raising awareness of the Blade and Out Athlete Fund. The Blade will have media credentials and VIP access for related events.
“We are excited to partner with the Washington Blade, the oldest LGBTQ newspaper in the United States and the Los Angeles Blade, already a strong supporter of Out Athlete Fund and Pride House LA/West Hollywood,” said Michael Ferrera, CEO of Pride House LA. “Our mission is about increasing the visibility of LGBTQ+ athletes and fans to challenge the historical hostility toward our community in the sports world. Visibility is what publications like the Washington and Los Angeles publications are all about. We know they will play a key part in our success.”
“LGBTQ visibility has never been more important and we are thrilled to work with Out Athlete Fund and Pride House LA to tell the stories of queer athletes and ensure the 2028 Summer Games are inclusive and affirming for everyone,” said Blade Editor Kevin Naff.
Out Athlete Fund is a 501(c)3 designed to raise money to offset the training cost of out LGBTQ athletes in need of funding for training. The Washington Blade is the nation’s oldest LGBTQ news outlet; the Los Angeles Blade is its sister publication founded nine years ago.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are expected to compete in the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that open on Friday.
Outsports.com notes eight Americans — including speedskater Conor McDermott-Mostowy and figure skater Amber Glenn — are among the 44 openly LGBTQ athletes who will compete in the games. The LGBTQ sports website also reports Ellis Lundholm, a mogul skier from Sweden, is the first openly transgender athlete to compete in any Winter Olympics.
“I’ve always been physically capable. That was never a question,” Glenn told Outsports.com. “It was always a mental and competence problem. It was internal battles for so long: when to lean into my strengths and when to work on my weaknesses, when to finally let myself portray the way I am off the ice on the ice. That really started when I came out publicly.”
McDermott-Mostowy is among the six athletes who have benefitted from the Out Athlete Fund, a group that has paid for their Olympics-related training and travel. The other beneficiaries are freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy, speed skater Brittany Bowe, snowboarder Maddy Schaffrick, alpine skier Breezy Johnson, and Paralympic Nordic skier Jake Adicoff.
Out Athlete Fund and Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood on Friday will host a free watch party for the opening ceremony.
“When athletes feel seen and accepted, they’re free to focus on their performance, not on hiding who they are,” Haley Caruso, vice president of the Out Athlete Fund’s board of directors, told the Los Angeles Blade.
Four Italian LGBTQ advocacy groups — Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano — have organized the games’ Pride House that will be located at the MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan.
Pride House on its website notes it will “host a diverse calendar of events and activities curated by associations, activists, and cultural organizations that share the values of Pride” during the games. These include an opening ceremony party at which Checcoro, Milan’s first LGBTQ chorus, will perform.
ILGA World, which is partnering with Pride House, is the co-sponsor of a Feb. 21 event that will focus on LGBTQ-inclusion in sports. Valentina Petrillo, a trans Paralympian, is among those will participate in a discussion that Simone Alliva, a journalist who writes for the Italian newspaper Domani, will moderate.
“The event explores inclusivity in sport — including amateur levels — with a focus on transgender people, highlighting the role of civil society, lived experiences, and the voices of athletes,” says Milano Pride on its website.
The games will take place against the backdrop of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s decision to ban trans women from competing in women’s sporting events.
President Donald Trump last February issued an executive order that bans trans women and girls from female sports teams in the U.S. A group of Republican lawmakers in response to the directive demanded the International Olympics Committee ban trans athletes from women’s athletic competitions.
The IOC in 2021 adopted its “Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations” that includes the following provisions:
• 3.1 Eligibility criteria should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations.
• 3.2 Provided they meet eligibility criteria that are consistent with principle 4 (“Fairness”, athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity.
• 3.3 Criteria to determine disproportionate competitive advantage may, at times, require testing of an athlete’s performance and physical capacity. However, no athlete should be subject to targeted testing because of, or aimed at determining, their sex, gender identity and/or sex variations.
The 2034 Winter Olympics are scheduled to take place in Salt Lake City. The 2028 Summer Olympics will occur in Los Angeles.
Sports
‘Heated Rivalry’ stars to participate in Olympic torch relay
Games to take place next month in Italy
“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie will participate in the Olympic torch relay ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics that will take place next month in Italy.
HBO Max, which distributes “Heated Rivalry” in the U.S., made the announcement on Thursday in a press release.
The games will take place in Milan and Cortina from Feb. 6-22. The HBO Max announcement did not specifically say when Williams and Storrie will participate in the torch relay.
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