Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was greeted with a fistful of glitter as he arrived at his final campaign event Friday night, in Johnston, Iowa. KCAU (which has raw video) reports that an unidentified man shouted "Stop the hate! Taste the rainbow!" as he threw glitter at the former Pennsylvania senator before being ushered out of Okoboji Grille, where Santorum was scheduled to watch Iowa and Oklahoma in the Insight Bowl. Santorum nonchalantly brushed the purple glitter off his shoulders and walked away without acknowledging the man. "Glitter-bombing" has becoming the emerging form of protests of certain gay rights activists. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was glitter-bombed at a book signing in September. The socially conservative Santorum has made family values and opposition to same sex marriage central planks of his campaign and in the past week has appeared to gain some traction in the polls as a result.
What if you were gay and voted Republican? The Boston Globe tries hard to arrive at the top ten gay reasons to vote GOP.
As 2011 comes to a close, the major U.S. professional sports of football, basketball and baseball still have never had an active male player declare that they are gay. In fact, there are still only a small number who have come out even in retirement. Among them is retired baseball pro Billy Bean who played for San Diego Padres, Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Dodgers during the 90s and came out publicly in the 2003 memoir Going The Other Way. “I still feel that a lot of players are afraid to put themselves at the center of a storm,” Bean tells Gay Star News. “Even they're comfortable with themselves and think half of their team would be fine, it's usually one of two of the guys who is bad and there's that fear there. Or maybe it's the front office and the team doesn't want a distraction.” Bean, now 47, paid a price for remaining in the closet; when he was playing for the San Diego Padres, his lover died unexpectedly. He could not mourn him for fear of being outed and it took an emotional toll that resulted in his baseball career ending prematurely after 12 years in the major leagues. To this day, Bean is among just a little more than a handful of retired male pro athletes in major team sports in the U.S. have come out: football's Dave Kopay, Roy Simmons and Esera Tuaolo, basketball's John Amaechi, and baseball's and the late baseball player Glenn Burke. But Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas, who retired earlier this year, came out in 2009 to lead the way in his sport. Two soccer pros also came out in 2011: American soccer pro David Testo announced last month that he is gay while Anton Hysen became Europe's most high-profile openly gay player earlier in the year.”My feeling every time when that happens is it's a step closer,' he said of the soccer and rugby players coming out. 'It's a little more awareness. Soccer is such a huge sport in Latin America and Europe. It can only get us a little closer to what everybody is waiting for and that's with the big male team sports here,” adding, “It's going to take maybe just one special guy who can really move that ball forward. We'll see.”
Robert Huber, writing in Philadelphia Magazine, suggests that with the numbers of professional athletes playing on the city’s several teams – the Eagles, the Flyers, the Phillies, the 76ers – there must be, at any given time, statistically, at least one gay player. Huber interviews some twenty member of the Eagles about having a gay teammate and writes, “I got the feeling, going around that locker room after practice, that I’d entered a time warp: Having a gay teammate would be troublesome for many Eagles—especially sharing the shower—but it was more than that. For many players it was, in fact, a brand-new idea.” Huber continues, arguing that, “There’s no doubt that some of our prime Philadelphia sporting heroes—players we’ve rooted for over the years—are gay. A lot of them, in fact. Just do the math. A generally accepted rule of thumb suggests that 10-percent of the population is homosexual. There are more than 100 players currently on our four local pro teams. So it’s clear that whatever teams we get behind, some of the players we’re now applauding or booing are gay. Over the years, of course, thousands of athletes have graced the Philly sporting scene. Scores of them were undoubtedly gay, too. We care so deeply about favourite players, especially from our youth: Mike Schmidt. Bobby Clarke. Reggie White. Julius Erving. And then we go right on rooting and caring: Mike Vick. Chase Utley. LeSean McCoy. It’s an intense connection we feel, even a shared identity. We may wear a star’s uniform jersey on big-game days. Or the kids do. Or our spouse. But what if Julius Erving or Mike Schmidt or Shady McCoy were gay? In fact, a recent Phillies player, a renowned womanizer, has been rumoured to be quite interested in men. There are whispers in gay circles about him picking up men at Knock, a bar on Washington Square West, and taking them back to his condo. Phillies insiders still murmur about his bisexuality.”
If you have ever wanted to sneak a peek at Lance Bass partial butt your wish has come true, professional gay Bass and his new boyfriend Michael Turchin spotted lounging Saturday in Miami.
0 comments:
Post a Comment