Sports
Trans athlete: an advocate and a competitor
Porsha Burton talks transition and importance of a team
Porsha Burton is missing her sport. A former track and field athlete, she stopped competing in high school to begin the process of transitioning to her true gender identity.
Burton began as an 8 year old with the Cambria Youth Association in Philadelphia and found success as a sprinter and shot putter. She ran through her freshman year of high school before starting hormone blockers at age 15.
“My participation in sports stopped because it seemed counterproductive to be pumping muscles while I was trying to be softer,” says Burton. “Also, my appearance was changing, and it would have been distracting to race against boys and not fair to the girls.”
Had Burton chosen to compete, according to transathlete.com, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association has a policy on “mixed-gender” participation that includes some phrasing on transgender athletes.
However, the policy allows a school’s principal to make the final decision about what gender the student is and what team they may play on, without outlining any criteria for the decision making process.
A class project in junior high led Burton to a path of sexual health advocacy where she educated herself on topics such as pregnancy prevention, STIs and HIV. At age 18, she furthered her own transition by working with a doctor at the Mazzoni Center to gain more knowledge on hormones, therapy and surgeries.
Her work career began at The COLOURS Organization in Philadelphia as a peer educator performing street outreach to young trans women.
“My brother passed from HIV complications during that time,” Burton says. “I have always wished I could have shared more of the things I have learned with him.”
A relationship brought her to D.C. where she was impressed by the people of color she was meeting who had education on their side. She began working at the DC Center for the LGBT Community before moving over to the D.C. Department of Health as a Health Impact Specialist. Burton was contracted out by the DOH and worked inside of local youth organization SMYAL for over a year.
Now working as a community health worker, Burton is hoping to reintroduce sports into her life.
“If you are going to whisper in people’s ears how great they are going to be, you should also be the best that you can be,” says Burton. “I have a love for being athletic and am excited at the thought of competing again. My younger self would have been inspired by seeing a trans woman as an athlete. I never would have stopped.”
Burton happens to be living in a city with a thriving LGBT sports community. The DC Front Runners offer a walking and running program along with a 10-week series of track workouts.
“It’s wonderful to live in a city like D.C. with such an incredible infrastructure for the LGBT community,” says Mick Bullock, Club Coordinator for the DC Front Runners. “We have members from all walks of life, and we are a running family. We accept everyone and are very experienced with nonbinary and trans athletes.”
“We want to represent the whole community and we love diversity,” adds Jeremy Garrett, track coach for the DC Front Runners. “We offer a full range of paces and cater to all abilities. The track program is designed to be fun and a great workout.”
While Porsha Burton explores her path back into sports, the LGBT sports community in D.C. stands ready to embrace her and any individual that wants to reap the benefits of participating in sports.
“My former teammates taught me how to be a team player,” says Burton. “I would like for people who want to understand why a trans athlete should be able to compete and be part of a team, to do more research. Most of the great things in life were made from a team effort.”
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.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
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