Yogi Berra, Baseball Legend and LGBT Ally, Dead at 90

Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, who died Tuesday at age 90, was famed for his playing prowess and tendency to mangle the English language to comedic effect — but, in an achievement that’s less well known, he was also a strong LGBT ally.

In 2013, Berra became an ambassador for Athlete Ally, an organization that partners with professional, college, and Olympic athletes to advance LGBT equality. Under his leadership, the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Little Falls, N.J., presented an exhibit titled “Championing Respect,” highlighting athletes who contributed to social change, from Jackie Robinson to Billie Jean King to those working for LGBT equality today.

“We will remember Yogi Berra for his values and his courage,” said Hudson Taylor, Athlete Ally founder and executive director, in a statement posted on the group’s website. “He was a true pioneer for inclusion in sport, and a personal hero of mine. Not only was he one of the best catchers in MLB history, but he was strongly committed to diversity, inclusion, and education.”

“As Yogi said, ‘Respect the game, respect others. That’s what I always learned in sports. Treat everyone the same. That’s how it should be,’” Taylor added. “I couldn’t agree more. Yogi truly understood what it meant to be an ally, and he lived it every day. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and we thank Yogi for teaching us all to value respect and inclusion in sport.” The group presented Berra with an Athlete Ally Action Award in 2014.

Berra played 18 seasons with the New York Yankees — 1946 through 1963 — and one with the crosstown Mets, mostly at the physically demanding position of catcher. He had a lifetime batting average of .285, hit 358 home runs, and amassed 1,430 runs batted in. He played on 10 world championship teams with the Yankees, and he went on to coach and manage for the Yankees and Mets, leading both to the World Series. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972.

Born Lawrence Peter Berra, he received the nickname “Yogi” as a teenager from friends who thought he took a yoga-like pose as he sat cross-legged waiting his turn at bat. A cartoon character, Yogi Bear, was named after Berra.

Many humorous quotes are attributed to Berra; whether or not he actually uttered them “has long been a matter of speculation,” The New York Times noted in its obituary. Among them: “You can observe a lot just by watching”; “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”; “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded,” — the latter of a popular restaurant.

Underneath it all, Berra was actually brainy, a Times sportswriter noted in 1963, saying, “He has continued to allow people to regard him as an amiable clown because it brings him quick acceptance, despite ample proof, onfield and off, that he is intelligent, shrewd and opportunistic.”

He was also a consistent champion of the underdog. He was friendly and supportive to the Cleveland Indians’ Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, and welcoming of Elston Howard, the Yankees’ first black team member. His museum has offered a variety of programs aimed at fostering sportsmanship and educational achievement among young people. And then there’s the partnership with Athlete Ally.

“You don’t usually see guys like Yogi at gay pride parades,” center director Dave Kaplan told the Times earlier this year, “but when I explained to him that this is the equivalent of the civil rights movement — people looking for equal opportunity and respect — he said: ‘I have no problem with that. If they can play, they can play.’”

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/sports/2015/9/23/yogi-berra-baseball-legend-and-lgbt-ally-dead-90

Study: Younger men more likely to consider being gay a core part of identity

Gay men in their 20s are far more likely to consider their sexual orientation to be a core part of their identity than gay men in their 40s, according to a study released by Logo TV on Wednesday (23 September).

The Gay Men Redefined survey was given to 1,000 men in the US between the ages of 18 and 49. It found that 55% of men in their 20s view being gay as extremely or very important to their identity. This is 15% higher than gay men in their 40s.

Almost all respondents (95%) seem to agree that younger gay men are embracing their gay identity more so today than in the past.

They also almost all are united (92%) in hoping the community becomes more accepting of each other, that there a a need for more open dialogue among gay men (91%), and 87% wish the gay community was as united during the rest of the year as we are during Pride.

With same-sex marriage now legal in all 50 US states, six in 10 of the respondents who are in their 20s say their families expect them to get married and have children one day.  But 67 percent still believe that being gay means you have the freedom to do things differently.

The survey also showed that coming out is no longer the most defining experience for many young days. Of those in their 20s and 30s, 65% said they are focused on life after coming out and are struggling to figure out what kind of gay man they want to be.

Other findings include:

• 61 percent of gay men in their 20s and 30s believe gay community was more united in the past.
• 85 percent agree that even as gay people become more accepted, they should have places that are just for them and many are sad to see gay neighborhoods and bars disappear.
• 67 percent say their life is more interesting because they are gay.
• 75 percent believe that being gay has had a positive effect on their life.
• 86 percent still wish there were more gay role models and mentors they could look up to.

The post Study: Younger men more likely to consider being gay a core part of identity appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/study-younger-men-more-likely-to-consider-being-gay-a-core-part-of-identity/

Jets Wide Receiver Eric Decker Shirtless for Flaunt

Eric Decker shirtless.

Eric Decker gave an interview to Flaunt magazine this month, and offered them some quotes about his high IQ, his reality series on E!, his married life, and what he likes to wear:

“I always usually have the same equipment guy put on my jersey and I wear double-­sided tape on my pads, so that the jersey lays a certain way,” he says. Off the field, Decker says, “I always like to be in jeans and a t-­shirt, but then I also like to get dressed up when we go to events or even travel for games. [I like] wearing suits and driving a nice car.”

But Flaunt also got to the meat of the story: “Decker’s beach body is almost offensive.”

The post Jets Wide Receiver Eric Decker Shirtless for Flaunt appeared first on Towleroad.

Towleroad

Jets Wide Receiver Eric Decker Shirtless for Flaunt

Caitlyn Jenner Likely to Escape Charges in Deadly Crash

After rear-ending a car that lost control and crashed head-on with another vehicle in Malibu, Calif., last February, trans reality star Caitlyn Jenner is likely to escape vehicular manslaughter charges, TMZ reports.

Jenner’s action were “negligent, but not criminal,” according to sources at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, who relied on information obtained at the accident scene from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. District Attorney Jackie Lacey could override her staff’s recommendation and file criminal charges herself, though TMZ believes that’s unlikely.

When L.A. County sheriff’s deputies completed their investigation last month, a detective said there was a “50/50” chance that Jenner would face a criminal charge in the accident, but so far no charges have been filed against anyone. If one is filed against Jenner, the charge would most likely be misdemeanor-level manslaughter, the detective said.

In the accident, Jenner’s Cadillac Escalade rear-ended Kimberly Howe’s car, pushing it into oncoming traffic, where it was struck head-on by a Hummer. After rear-ending Howe, Jenner also rear-ended a Prius driven by Jessica Steindorff. Howe, 69, died in the crash, and several people were injured. Howe’s stepchildren have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jenner, and Steindorff has filed a personal injury suit against her.

Jenner was driving under the speed limit, she told Matt Lauer, but sheriff’s deputies have said she was driving too fast for the rainy conditions that day — something with which Jenner took issue.

The usual sentence for misdemeanor-level manslaughter is a year in the county jail. About the possibility of going to jail, Jenner told Lauer, “The media wants that picture, don’t they? That is the worst-case scenario. I don’t know. We’ll see. The men’s county jail. It is an enormous problem that they would put trans women in a men’s county jail.”

The L.A. County Men’s Central Jail, by the way, does have a special wing for gay and transgender inmates, and while such segregation is controversial, the arrangement has reportedly protected gay and trans inmates from violence.

Neal Broverman

www.advocate.com/caitlyn-jenner/2015/9/23/caitlyn-jenner-likely-escape-charges-deadly-crash

Justice Scalia Is Still Hopping Mad Over The Gay Marriage Ruling

With less than two weeks before the start of the new Supreme Court session, Justice Antonin Scalia is still lamenting Obergefell v. Hodges, the June ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

At a Tuesday speech at Rhodes College, which his grandson attends, the justice blasted the decision, calling it the “furthest imaginable extension of the Supreme Court doing whatever it wants,” according to The Associated Press.

Scalia dissented in the case, accusing the court of being a “threat to democracy” and the justices who ruled for a constitutional right to marriage for gay couples the “Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast.”

The speech at Rhodes seemed to signal that his dismay over gay marriage continues.

“Saying that the Constitution requires that practice, which is contrary to the religious beliefs of many of our citizens,” Scalia said, “I don’t know how you can get more extreme than that.”

He added, “I worry about a court that’s headed in that direction.”

The speech came as part of the college’s observance of Constitution Day, a statutory initiative schools use for educational programs and civics lessons on citizenship and the Constitution.

But rather than celebrate the founding document, Scalia appeared to decry its destruction by his colleagues on the court.

“Do you really want your judges to rewrite the Constitution?” he pondered. He bemoaned that the court was made up of no more than “lawyers” who are “terribly unrepresentative of our country,” according to the Commercial Appeal, a Memphis-based news outlet.

Scalia said there was nothing in his legal education at one of America’s top law schools that makes him especially qualified to decide some of the hotly debated issues that reach the court.

“What is it that I learned at Harvard Law School that makes me peculiarly qualified to determine such profound moral and ethical questions as whether there should be a right to abortion, whether there should be same-sex marriage, whether there should be a right to suicide?” he asked, according to the AP. “It has nothing to do with the law. Even Yale Law School doesn’t teach that stuff.”

Scalia also used the speech and a question-and-answer session with students to address controversial subjects such as the death penalty and U.S. drone strikes against Americans in the Middle East. 

Scalia didn’t seem to have a problem with the latter issue.

“I think, if that person has taken up arms against the United States, what’s the difference between allowing our soldiers to shoot him dead and allowing a drone to kill him?” he said.

The Supreme Court’s next session kicks off Oct. 5.

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Margaret Cho’s mom used magazine called Ass Master to teach daughter about gay people

It’s hard to believe that comic Margaret Cho wasn’t always an expert on all things gay.

But when she was around 7 or 8, she knew nothing.

It was her mother, who is so often imitated in her act, who decided to teach her daughter about gay people. Since the family operated a bookstore in San Francisco, the mother grabbed a gay porn magazine called Ass Master to help with her explanation.

‘She was really just trying to explain to me what gay people were like, because she didn’t know that I knew about gay people,’ Cho said Wednesday (23 September) on HuffPost Live.

‘So she wanted to explain to me gay people, and she had a visual aid. … She was really shocked by it, but at the same time trying to explain gay people so that I wouldn’t be alarmed.’

All these years later, Cho thinks her mom did the right thing at the right time.

‘I didn’t know anything then and was young enough to not understand sexuality and that kind of sexuality, so it was very enlightening,’

Cho made her third appearance on the E! show Fashion Police earlier this week and has proved to be an audience favorite. Her latest stand-up special, Margaret Cho: psyCHO premieres on Showtime on Friday (25 September).

The post Margaret Cho’s mom used magazine called Ass Master to teach daughter about gay people appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/margaret-chos-mom-used-magazine-called-ass-master-to-teach-daughter-about-gay-people/

Former Child Star Danny Pintauro Tells Oprah About Meth Addiction

Danny Pintauro, who won hearts as the adorable son of Judith Light in the ’80s sitcom Who’s The Boss, came out publicly in 1997 and married his husband last year in a beachfront wedding, is about to share his deepest, darkest secret with Oprah Winfrey. The 39-year-old will appear on this Saturday’s episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now to discuss the epidemic of crystal meth use within the gay community and tearfully tells the host that he’s been in the scene and reveals that there are websites designed specifically to allow meth users to connect with one another.

Related: PHOTOS: Former Child Star Danny Pintauro Married His Boyfriend Today

Watch a clip from the episode below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/2J0VM-7MJDE/former-child-star-danny-pintauro-tells-oprah-about-meth-addiction-20150923

Alan Poul to Direct Feature Film Adaptation of Gay Lit Classic ‘Dancer from the Dance’

Alan Poul is set to direct a feature film adaptation of Andrew Holleran’s classic 1978 gay novel Dancer from the Dance about a lawyer who gives up his day job and immerses himself in the ’70s social scene of gay men in New York City and Fire Island, Deadline reports:

Poul’s TV directing credits include Six Feet Under, The Newsroom, Rome, Swingtown, and the feature The Back-up Plan. RT Features’ productions include Frances Ha, Love is Strange, Mistress America, and The Witch. Screenplay is by Joshua Harmon, John Krokidas, and Austin Bunn. Poul, Rodrigo Teixeira, and Mauricio Zacharias will produce. Production is scheduled for summer 2016 and WME is packaging.

Poul also co-produced the ’90s Tales of the City series which aired on PBS and Showtime.

Brazil’s RT Features is co-producing.

The post Alan Poul to Direct Feature Film Adaptation of Gay Lit Classic ‘Dancer from the Dance’ appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

Alan Poul to Direct Feature Film Adaptation of Gay Lit Classic ‘Dancer from the Dance’

WATCH: New Film Shows Real-Life Trans Parents Like Never Before

The joys and struggles of tansgender parents are gaining increased visibility on television, both in scripted and reality TV formats. But a new documentary film strives to add more voices to the stories that are, for the moment, dominated by white trans women whose families are coming to terms with their parent’s authentic self. 

Earlier this week, The Advocate celebrated Jeffrey Tambor’s Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his portrayal of Maura Pfefferman, a Jewish parent and retired college professor who comes out to her children and ex-wife as a trans woman on Amazon’s hit dramadey series Transparent. Meanwhile, Caitlyn Jenner negotiates new terrain in her relationship with her children and ex-wife as a newly transitioned trans woman on E!’s reality docu-series I Am Cait, as The Advocate has chronicled. 

But Rémy Huberdeau’s new documentary, Transgender Parents, shares multiple stories of real-life trans parents in Canada, revealing their cultural diversity and socio-economic challenges with a nuance that has yet to enter the mainstream cultural conversation about transgender people who are parents. The film premiered last December on the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Documentary Channel, and will screen on tour across Europe in October.

“We are fortunate to have trans parents in the media,” Huberdeau told The Advocate in a phone interview earlier this month. “But there is also a phenomenon of older trans women losing regular contact with their kids, and that sends shock waves through their lives. Parenting brings families closer together or it takes them apart. When people start worrying about who the parent has become, then that can be a recipe for things to fall apart.”

Stefonknee is one of six trans parents profiled in Huberdeau’s film. (Only first names are used in the film.) She is is a white, low-income Toronto trans woman, public speaker, and activist who lost regular contact with her seven children after she transitioned. Along with becoming estranged from her children, Stefonknee lost her job and must rely on public assistance to survive.

The film follows Stefonknee as she returns to her rural Ontario hometown in an attempt to heal. Stefonknee’s scenes reveal a woman of enormous courage who faces real-life domestic and economic challenges that are not depicted within I Am Cait or Transparent, despite the indisputable contributions towards affirmative trans visibility such programs provide.

Syrus and Nik are two black gay trans men in their 30s who are raising a blonde, blue-eyed daughter named Amélie who was birthed by Syrus. The film chronicles Syrus’s movement away from his masculine gender expression in order to carry Amélie to term and his poignant, gradual reembrace of masculine expression after his daughter is born. Syrus and Nik must negotiate challenging terrain as darker-skinned parents with a towheaded, light-skinned daughter, especially because they are often mistaken in public for Amélie’s nannies rather than her parents. Luckily, the two dads live in a neighborhood in downtown Toronto with other gender-variant and queer-friendly families who provide love and support. 

“One out of three trans people are parents in the USA, and in Canada it’s one out of four. That’s a signifiant number dealing with what it means to take care of families while being themselves,” Huberdeau explained over the phone. He is a Franco-Manitoban Canadian trans man whose previous short films include Loveletter to St-Boniface (2002) and Transforming Family (2011), which has been translated into seven languages. Transgender Parents is an extended, 45-minute follow-up to Transforming Family.

Transgender Parents also includes the stories of Aiyyana, an indigenous Canadian trans grandmother of  Haudenosaunee ancestry, who won the prestigious John Hirsch Prize in Performance Art from the Canada Council for the Arts; Jenna, a 30-year-old trans mother-to-be who runs an organic farm with her partner, Eby, near Montreal; and Hershel, a Jewish psychotherapist trans dad in his late 60s who bonds with his college-age son. 

Find a full listing of the October European screenings of Transgender Parents in Denmark, Germany, and Austria at the film’s website, and watch the trailer below:

Transgender Parents Doc TRAILER from Rémy Huberdeau on Vimeo.

Cleis Abeni

www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/9/23/watch-new-film-shows-real-life-trans-parents-never

LGBTQ Literature Creates Social Justice in the Classrooms and Beyond
Previously, I shared the information from a workshop that I created and presented on LGBTQ literacies. What follows is the information from a talk that I gave at another conference. Once again, I wish to share my work with the public because I do not believe in keeping information within the confines of academia (What is the purpose of knowledge if it only remains within the ivory tower and tiny bubble that is the university?). I wish to add to the dialogue on LGBTQ literature, and I want your feedback.

You Go, Gurl!: How LGBTQ Literature Creates Social Justice in the Classrooms and Beyond (Teaching LGBTQ Literature in Community College Literature and Writing Classes)

A Talk by Michael Carosone

Presented at the Transitions and Transactions II Conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York; the theme of the conference was “Literature and Creative Writing Pedagogies in Community Colleges.”

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” — Immanual Kant

Overview:
When they talk about diversity at a college, in a classroom, in a curriculum and in literature, what they really mean is diversity in terms of race, gender and class (and maybe ethnicity), but what they never mean is diversity in terms of sexuality, sexual orientation — especially homosexuality and gay identity and sensibility — and gender identity and expression, and all aspects of queerness. The deviant other is still ignored, silenced and marginalized. This is because of the institutionalized homophobia, heterosexism and hetero-supremacy that are inherent in all colleges and universities — alive and strong, even in 2014, even in New York City. It is time for a change. True diversity includes all identities, even sexual identities.

Personal Statement:
Years ago, when I taught my first English 101 class at LaGuardia Community College, I created the theme for my course to be “Reading, Writing and Researching Gender and Sexuality.” Of the 15 weeks of instruction during the semester, only two were spent on homosexuality, gayness, queerness and the LGBTQ community. However, those were two weeks too much for some students who complained to the chairperson and who posted homophobic and hurtful comments towards me and my course on RateMyProfessor.com. This was when I realized that there is still much work to be done in eradicating the homophobia and heterosexism that exists in higher education, especially at a community college like LaGuardia, where the student population is comprised of students from many different countries, and the cultures of many of these countries are not welcoming to LGBTQ individuals. However, a college must define its own culture — a culture that embraces LGBTQ people and ideas.

This Is How LGBTQ Literature Creates Social Justice:
In his poem, “An Open Letter to My Students,” Gerard Wozek eloquently explains how the teaching of LGBTQ literature creates social justice in the classroom and beyond.

But here are my thoughts: LGBTQ literature, and the teaching and reading of it, whether in the classroom or outside of it, creates social justice because it declares to the students and everyone else that LGBTQ people exist, that they are human, that they are worthy, that their lives matter, that they have voices and that their voices will no longer be silenced, ignored, marginalized, oppressed, discriminated against and violated. When LGBTQ literature is taught, read and analyzed in the community college English classroom, the clear message is that it is important enough to study and to include in the curriculum; therefore, LGBTQ people must be important enough to be considered as human beings and citizens. Thus, ideas of equality are created, minds are enlightened, hope is tangible, ignorance shrinks and discrimination weakens. This is how LGBTQ literature creates social justice in the classroom and beyond.

Questions to pose:
1. What is LGBTQ literature?
2. Where can we find it?
3. Who writes and reads it?
4. Why should/must we teach it?
5. How can when teach it?
6. How do we include it in our curriculum and give it the same importance as we do other literatures?
7. How do we bring it from the margins to the center?
8. How do we stop the excuses on why we cannot teach it?
9. How can LGBTQ create social justice in community college literature/writing classes?
10. How do you queer, gayify, bend or lavenderize your curriculum and classrooms?
11. Why are so many English instructors reluctant to teach LGBTQ literature or any LGBTQ topics/issues? And how is this a form of homophobia?
12. Why is a homosexuality (LGBTQ) as an identity often ignored by so many educators? Why is it not viewed as an important identity like other identities? What does this tell us about how homosexuality is viewed by many educators?
13. Is the education system, and the discipline of English in particular, truly honest about diversity, multiculturalism and social justice if it ignores LGBTQ voices, issues, people, history and culture?
14. How can we queer/gayify/bend/lavenderize straight teachers to make them understand that a sexual identity is also about a sensibility and not only about sexual activity, and that they need to wear lavender lenses at times, in order to understand the compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity and hetero-supremacy that they perpetuate in the classrooms?
15. How can LGBTQ teachers help heterosexual teachers to include LGBTQ content in their classrooms?
16. What are the politics behind the institutionalized homophobia that persists in education?

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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