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As you may have heard, there has been some extremely exciting news in the intersecting worlds of gay people and sports lately.
On Monday, Rick Welts, the chief executive and president of the Phoenix Suns, came out in a very public way (you can’t get much more public than the front page of the New York Times, can you?). In coming out, Welts aims to break the silence surrounding homosexuality in sports. The reaction to his news has been very encouraging. David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA, has been nothing but supportive. Before coming out to the world at large, Welts came out to Bill Russell, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, and to Steve Nash, the Suns point guard and two-time NBA MVP, both of whom offered their full support and respect.
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  Rugby pro Ben Cohen A lot of people, myself included, wish that more top-level athletes would come out. Based on rough statistics, it’s clear that there are many athletes competing in the upper echelons of their sports who are queer but remain closeted. The fact is, though, that coming out as an elite athlete is a catch 22–athletes aren’t going to come forward until there is less of a stigma around homosexuality in sports, but there isn’t going to be less of a stigma until there are more openly gay athletes.
This is where straight allies come in. Recently, several high profile straight athletes have publicly declared their allegiance to lgbt rights and to lgbt athletes.
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  Johnny Weir at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver I begin this year’s best of roundups with an unlikely choice: sports. I’m not sure if I’m bucking the stereotype or playing along with it but qPDX has never been particularly strong in our sports coverage (that’s an understatement girl…) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some really important stories that emerged in the world of gay sports. And even I was pretty glued to the screen for the Winter Olympics, being virtually blinded by Johnny Weir’s sequined outfits.
So begins the countdowns, mostly the top 5 news and arts stories, although I could only narrow the top 10 when it came to music. And you get 2 each day all week long!
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