Another one for our team

Examiner: As of May 25, 2012, Chef Anne Burrell is on record as being in a same-sex relationship with her current girlfriend. The two have been together for the past two years. While she does not deny that she has been in the lesbian relationship with her partner, she does admit she has not made a big deal about it because her partner is very reserved. The spark for Anne coming out follows a comment made by fellow chef, Ted Alllen during a radio interview. Allen commented: “I am not going to put a label on Anne, but she is dating a woman right now.”

Anne’s rep shares: “Anne doesn’t feel she was outed. She has made no secret of her relationship,” her rep told the New York Post‘s Page Six. “Her significant other is a very private woman. They have been together for a couple of years and spend a lot of time together. It is no secret in the culinary world.”

‘Coming Out’: Gay Teenagers, in Their Own Words

From the New York Times: click to read…

Thanks Kobe. Gay baskeball is still a headline

Outsports: Former Villanova basketball player Will Sheridan, who graduated four years ago, is only the second former Div. 1 male basketball player to publicly come out of the closet as gay. John Amaechi was the first. Former Long Beach State 49er Travon Free previously came out as bisexual. Sheridan will be interviewed on ESPN’s Outside the Linestoday at 3pmET.

The ESPN.com article profiling Sheridan’s coming out says he was out to teammates and dated men while at Villanova, but that he held back from coming out publicly.

Though Sheridan wasn’t out publicly in college, he didn’t entirely hide either. He quietly and privately dated a man from another Philadelphia school. Plus he was artsy — he took part in spoken-word performances at Villanova. He ran funny, on his tiptoes. (“I actually tried to change that for years,” Sheridan said. “Then I said, f— it. Some people talk funny. I run funny.”) So there was plenty of stereotypical ammunition and rumor mill gossip to load up opposing fans.

And, as we’ve been saying for years, Sheridan’s coming out on his team was accepted, Sheridan didn’t lose playing time, and he didn’t lose friends.

The locker room dynamic, team chemistry, none of it changed. He and [teammate and roommate Mike] Nardi would room together for three of their four seasons and Sheridan remained a popular teammate and vital part of the Wildcats’ success.

The players joked the way they always joked, talked the way they always talked.

USAToday: Charles Barkley says how openly gay athletes would be accepted in team locker rooms would only depend on how well they can play.

Barkley, on SiriusXM Radio, was asked about New York Ranger Sean Avery supporting same-sex marriage and whether openly gays athletes would be accepted in pro sports. Barkley replied how gay athletes would only be judged by “whether he can play or not. If somebody is gay, that’s their own business. But it bothers me how people try to say that jocks are not going to like a gay. … I think gay people should be allowed to get married and God bless them, that’s their own business. Listen, if a guy can’t play that’s the only time we don’t want to play with him. We don’t care about all that extracurricular stuff.”

Maddow: Come Out, Gay Anchors

Advocate: MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow says it’s time for other gay television anchors to come out and be open about their sexual orientation.

“I’m sure other people in the business have considered reasons why they’re doing what they’re doing, but I do think that if you’re gay you have a responsibility to come out,” she said to The Guardian.

Shortly after the profile on Maddow came out, many readers linked her call to action as a jab at CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who is rumored to be gay. Maddow rebutted the murmurs, saying that she had not mentioned Cooper throughout the interview, nor was she referring to him specifically.

“I wasn’t asked about Anderson Cooper, I didn’t say anything about him, he literally was never discussed during the interview at all — even implicitly,” she wrote on her blog Monday. “I don’t tend to be shy when I criticize — you wouldn’t have to read between the lines if that’s what I was trying to do.”

Personally I’m ready for Robin Roberts to step it up…

Cyclist Graeme Obree says he’s gay

Outsports: Cycling champion Graeme Obree, 45, has revealed he is gay and told the Scottish Sun he even pondered suicide because of his sexuality.

“I was brought up by a war generation; they grew up when gay people were put in jail. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn’t be gay. I’d no inkling about anything, I just closed down,” Obree told the newspaper (the full interview is not online).

 

Obree came out to his family after he told a therapist he was gay in 2005. He said the revelation, while a shock to his parents, brought them closer. Obree had been married and is now divorced. He has two teenage sons who encouraged him to come out, he told the London Guardian.

He also contemplated suicide:

“I was brought up thinking you’d be better dead than gay. I must have known I was gay and it was so unacceptable,” Obree said.

I knew nothing about Obree’s sporting career but Cycling News has a nice primer on someone considered an innovator in the sport:

His achievements on the bike have combined to make him one of cycling’s most enigmatic figures. The Scotsman claimed the World individual pursuit title in 1993 and 1995 but is best known for his innovative and pioneering attempts at the World hour record.

He claimed the hour record twice, in 1993 and 1994. The first successful, in Norway, saw him best a nine-year-old record held by Italian Francesco Moser using a hand-made bike constructed from spare parts dubbed ‘Old Faithful’. That record lasted only a week as Englishman Chris Boardman improved on Obree’s effort in Bordeaux, France during a rest day of that year’s Tour de France. Obree reclaimed the record in April, 1994.

Boardman, his cycling rival, sent him a Twitter message of support this week after Obree came out. Obree also said that Gareth Thomas’ coming out gave him reassurance to do the same.