I Thought Gay Softball Was Redundant

Posted in Uncategorized on April 21st, 2010 by bl1y

[Special thanks to BL2Y (no relation) for sending this story in.]

Three Seattle area men are suing the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association for discrimination after not being allowed to compete in the Gay Softball World Series two years ago.  The men, who are bisexual, were deemed not gay enough to compete in the tournament, which allows only two straight members per team.  Apparently bisexual isn’t gay enough.

NAGAAA is arguing that it is a private organization, and as such can restrict its membership and cannot be sued for discrimination.  The plaintiffs contend that by using public fields NAGAAA is a “public accomodation,” and as such must comply with anti-discriminatory laws.

I won’t get into the legit merits of the case, since I didn’t learn this shit in law school, and I sure as hell didn’t learn it after.  What’s more important is that this case brings to light just how bigoted many gay people are, especially against bisexuals and transgender people.  Being backwards and ignorant isn’t limited to straight, white males.

The whole idea of an “LGBT” community is a joke.  I get why gays and lesbians unite, that’s sort of a no brainer, but lots Ls and Gs can’t stand Bs or think that Bs aren’t even a real thing and are just showing off to get the attention of the Ss.  And, tons of Ls, Gs, and Bs just flat out can’t stand the Ts.  Trying to unite all the non-straight people is like trying to unite all the non-Christians into one group.  Yeah, let’s make a JMHB Alliance.  That’ll go over real well.

Also, you can’t even define them as non-straight.  Most transgendered people consider themselves straight.  There’s heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexuals, but then there’s also transgender and cisgender.  Most transgendered people are trans-straight, where as most gay people are cis-homo.

And, limiting yourself to Ls, Gs, Bs, and Ts means you marginalize other sexual minorities, such as Intersex.  So, some groups call themselves LGBTI, which means there could just be some other group that they’ve forgotten about.  Others call themselves LGBTQ, using the Q as a catchall, which is basically just like putting “Etc” on the end, but without admitting that’s what you’re doing, and being in the Etc basically means you’re queer, but not an important enough queer to get your own letter.  And then there’s also QSA groups (Queer-Straight Alliance), but again that mis-identifies the distinctions since most transgender people are both queer (because they’re trans) and straight (because they’re straight).

So really, in the end, the only good solutions are to either recognize that you’re all different groups and stop trying to force everyone into an awkward socio-political identification, or just accept that if a dude takes it in the ass from another dude, that’s gay enough to play on your queer little softball team.
