A former Minor League Baseball umpire is suing Major League Baseball in federal court, alleging he was fired as a retaliatory action after he accused a fellow female umpire of harassing him and using homophobic slurs. Brandon Cooper’s dream of becoming a Major League Baseball umpire “quickly became a nightmare when Mr. Cooper was repeatedly subjected to dehumanizing homophobic slurs such as, ‘faggot,’ ‘don’t be a bitch’ and ‘gay,’ and then ultimately terminated by the League because of his gender and sexual orientation,” according to a suit filed in federal district court in New York on Wednes ..read more

“For the first time in Germany! Gay football professionals plan group coming out.’” This was the headline that ran on the website of BILD, Germany’s most popular tabloid newspaper, back in November 2023. Suddenly this week, a version of the same story has gone viral, amplified by English-language social media accounts with millions of followers, resulting in a frenzy of gossipy comments. So what’s happened to kick it all off? And what does it tell us about the challenge still facing gay and bi athletes in men’s pro sports? Print circulations in Western media may be in decline, but the spirit o ..read more

Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. isn’t holding back on porn and NBA players’ wild sexual adventures. The latter involves gay sex and intimacy with trans women. The revelations are all part of Porter’s new online project, “Curious Mike,” where he explores topics of curiosity for him. On this particular day, Porter sat down with former porn star Lana Rhodes to talk about the impact of porn on society. Eventually, the conversation devolved into a tease about wild sexual adventures by NBA players. Rhoades waxed poetic about how porn and multiple sex partners creates a higher bar for men t ..read more

With the hiring of Karina Tovar as a referee in the NFL, there are now four on-field female referees in the league. Tovar joins Sarah Thomas, Maia Chaka and Robin DeLorenzo as the four female on-field officials in the NFL. There have also been a number of women in the NFL replay booth, including trailblazer Terri Valenti. The selection of Tovar by the NFL was celebrated by Sam Rapoport, an out league executive who has been instrumental in providing opportunities for women in football. Congrats to Korina Tovar for landing this coveted spot. #forwardprogress https://t.co/v7L7vGtrM5 pic.twitte ..read more

Two days after a federal appeals court upheld a trans athlete’s right to be on her middle-school track team, a 13-year-old eighth-grade trans girl named Becky Pepper-Jackson stepped into a shot put ring at a middle school county championship meet in West Virginia. She was sixth in the same event at these county championships last year. She’s put in a lot of work since then and is unbeaten in the shot put so far this season. As she was making her throws, five other competitors from a different school stepped in the ring and then stepped out. They scratched their throws as Pepper-Jackson took he ..read more

The NFL Draft, which runs Thursday through Saturday, will have no out gay or bi players selected because none of the potential draftees are publicly out, a trend that was broken only once, 10 years ago. In 2014, Michael Sam, who played at the University of Missouri, came out publicly as gay two months before the NFL Draft. Sam’s story became national news and it fueled weeks of speculation as to whether he’d be drafted and in what round. Day 1 of the draft came and Sam’s name wasn’t called. Ditto for Day 2. As Day 3 progressed from rounds 1 through 6, it appeared as if Sam — co-defensive playe ..read more

University of Nebraska gymnast Sam Phillips completed a successful season on the mat by earning two All-Americans honors at the NCAA Division I championships. And he did it all as an out gay athlete by sporting a Pride pin on his Cornhuskers gear all weekend. “I represent [the LGBTQ community] by just being myself on the competition floor, but to actually have the pin and show the colors I thought would be that much more substantial and important,” Phillips told Outsports. “It was important for people to actually see me rep the colors and put a firm stamp on my support and claim to the LGBTQ c ..read more

This weekend’s Disc Golf Pro Tour event in Nashville, Tenn., the Music City Open, saw play suspended for nearly two hours during second-round play Saturday while Nashville police investigated a threat against the event. A statement from the DGPT said that a call came into the site of the event that stated there would be “a threat of potential violence against a competitor at this weekend’s tournament.” “Threats of violence at DGPT events are utterly unacceptable and are treated with the utmost seriousness by our entire staff,” Jeff Spring, DGPT CEO and Tour Director said in an official st ..read more

For eight years, Campbell Harrison had been “desperately dreaming” of reaching the Olympic Games, as the climber phrased it on Instagram following the Oceania qualifier for Paris 2024, held in Melbourne in November. That was the day his dream became a reality. Having experienced intense disappointment at missing out on Tokyo 2020, Harrison found himself lying third in the standings after the qualifier’s boulder section and needing to dig deep. He responded perfectly, producing a perfect 100 score in his favored lead discipline, rocketing him to the summit and booking an Australian berth in the ..read more

“The Golden Girls” TV show holds a very special place in the pantheon of gay entertainment. During the show’s seven-season run in the 1980s and ’90s, it tackled LGBTQ issues and also gave, through the palatable voices of these older women, the perspective of gay men. Watching the series, it often seems this group of four women, constantly chasing love and romance, are simply stand-ins for gays. Many of the themes and storylines hold up in West Hollywood today. In the later years of the series, at least one of the main writers, Marc Cherry, was in fact a gay man. He went on to create “Desperate ..read more