Esera Tavai Tuaolo, nicknamed "Mr. Aloha", is an American former professional football player who was a defensive tackle for nine seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Oregon State Beavers.
Andrew Singer, also known as Soce, the elemental wizard, is an American rapper and producer and one of the rap scene’s openly gay MCs.
Scottie Reynolds is an American professional basketball player. Prior to his professional career he played college basketball for Villanova. Reynolds also competed with the United States national team in the 2007 Pan American Games.
QBoy is a UK-based rapper, producer, DJ, writer and presenter. He is one of the original few out rappers in hip hop circa 2001 that became pioneers of the new subgenre colloquially known as "homo hop". QBoy is currently a DJ and promoter of popular LGBTQ club night and party 'R & She: The Queens of Hip-Hop & R&B' which hosts events in London, Berlin and New York City.
Cyd Zeigler Jr. is a commentator and author in the field of sexuality and sports. Zeigler co-founded Outsports and the National Gay Flag Football League. He had a featured part in the documentary F(l)ag Football (2015).
Luke Caswell, known mononymously as Cazwell, is an American rapper, record producer, and songwriter. He has released the three studio albums Get into It in 2006, Watch My Mouth in 2009 and Hard 2 B Fresh in 2014, along with videos and singles.
The 2008–09 Villanova Wildcats men's basketball team represented Villanova University in the 2008–09 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. They were led by Jay Wright in his eighth year as head coach of the Wildcats. The Wildcats played their home games at The Pavilion on the school's campus as members of the Big East Conference. They finished the season 30–8, 13–5 in Big East play to finish in fourth place. They lost in the semifinals of the Big East tournament to Louisville. The Wildcats received an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament as the No. 3 seed in the East region. They defeated American, UCLA, Duke, and Pittsburgh to advance to the Final Four. In the Final Four they were defeated by the eventual national champion for the second straight year, North Carolina.
LGBTQ representation in hip hop music has existed since the birth of the genre even while enduring blatant discrimination. Due to its adjacency to disco, the earliest days of hip hop had a close relation to LGBT subcultures, and multiple LGBT DJs have played a role in popularizing hip hop. Since the early 2000s there has been a flourishing community of LGBTQ+ hip hop artists, activists, and performers breaking barriers in the mainstream music industry. Despite this early involvement, hip hop has long been portrayed as one of the least LGBT-friendly genres of music, with a significant body of the genre containing homophobic views and anti-gay lyrics, with mainstream artists such as Eminem and Tyler, the Creator having used casual homophobia in their lyrics, including usages of the word faggot. Attitudes towards homosexuality in hip hop culture have historically been negative, with slang that uses homosexuality as a punchline such as "sus", "no homo", and "pause" being heard in hip hop lyrics from some of the industry's biggest artists.
The National Gay Basketball Association (NGBA) is an LGBTQ sports organization which exists to promote gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender athletic participation in basketball.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-heterosexual or non-cisgender (LGBTQ+) community is prevalent within sports across the world.
"BEN" is a hip hop song written by rapper, producer, and director Adair Lion, a native of El Paso, Texas. The song samples Michael Jackson's 1972 song of the same name and gives a pro-LGBT message. One report described it as a message to the rap world, and a stance against gay discrimination. Towleroad called it a "beautifully-spun message about doing away with homophobia in hip-hop and Christianity, and accepting gay parents". Originally titled "It Gets Benner" in homage to the It Gets Better Project, Lion decided to use "Ben" with the name also serving as an acronym for "Better Everything Now".
Wade Alan Davis II is an American speaker, activist, writer, educator and former American football player.
There has been only one player who has publicly come out as gay or bisexual while being an active player in the National Football League (NFL): Carl Nassib, who came out as gay on June 21, 2021, while with the Las Vegas Raiders. He became the first openly gay player to play in an NFL game on September 13, 2021. He later became the first openly gay player in an NFL playoff game on January 15, 2022. Six former NFL players have come out publicly after they retired. In the 2014 NFL draft, the St. Louis Rams drafted Michael Sam in the seventh round, the 249th of 256 players selected, which made him the first openly gay player to be drafted into the NFL. However, on August 30, St. Louis released Sam as part of a final round of cuts to reduce their roster to the league-mandated 53 players before the start of the regular season.
Rashard Bradshaw, better known as Cakes da Killa, is an American rap artist who fuses genres of hip hop, house, and electronic dance music. He came to prominence in the "queer explosion" of hip hop music stemming from New York in 2012 and is among the credited performers for the current trend of acceptance of LGBT people in the rap community. Bradshaw is currently based in Atlanta and his second full-length studio album Svengali was released on October 28, 2022.
Travon Free is an American comedian, actor and writer. He has written for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The Daily Show on Comedy Central, and Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons on HBO.
Although gay athletes and coaches are increasingly accepted in college sports, they continue to be controversial among some people.
Dalton Maldonado is an American high school basketball player and LGBT rights activist who came to National prominence when he shared his harrowing tale of intimidation when he came out at a high school basketball game in Kentucky.
My-King Johnson is an American football defensive end.
