Keelin Godsey becomes the first openly transgender athlete to compete for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team; CNN and ESPN journalist LZ  Granderson writes about being black and gay; the first museum of gay and lesbian art opens in New York City; and other recent LGBTQ news selected by Sara Boesser in Juneau, Alaska (with supplemental info from Bent Alaska).

Sports

Keelin Godsey: First openly transgender athlete to make an Olympic bid

First openly transgender athlete competing for spot on American Olympic team
CNN, May 23, 2012

Keelin Godsey has an impressive record: he’s a two-time NCAA national hammer champion and took 5th at last year’s USA Track & Field championship, among other accomplishments. However, what makes Godsey stand out is that he used to be a she.

Born as Kelly, Godsey is biologically female, but he self-identifies as a male. Next month, he’ll head to Eugene, Oregon to compete for a spot on the U.S. Women’s Track and Field team, making him the first American Olympic contender to be openly transgender.

Godsey has not yet undergone any hormonal or other medical transition in order to compete for a seat on the women’s team, but will begin treatment after the Olympic trials and (in hopes he makes the team) the Olympic games have ended. Godsey was featured in a Sports Illustrated story recently by David Epstein and Pablo Torre, who joined CNN’s Starting Point panel to discuss the story, including the different standards in different sports organizations governing athletic competition by transgender athletes. Watch:

Outsports calls the original Sports Illustrated story “possibly the most comprehensive article on trans athletes we’ve ever seen in the media.” Here it is:

• 28 May 2012. “The Transgender Athlete” by David Epstein and Pablo Torre (Sports Illustrated).

For transgender men and women, the physiological traits that distinguish them as male or female don’t conform to how they feel about themselves. Some have undergone sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy to make their biological and gender identities match. Others, such as the 28-year-old Godsey, have not: He was born as a female and therefore competes as a female, but he identifies as male. Imagine a body, especially one as finely tuned as an elite athlete’s, feeling inescapably foreign—as if it were intended for the opposite sex. “I take a lot of pride in the fact that I have a good amount of muscle mass, and I’ve done it naturally,” says Godsey. “But in some ways, this is the last body I would ever want.”

More from NPR, which includes a lengthy audio interview with Pablo Torres about the issues facing transgender athletes:

• 24 May 2012. “Transgender Athlete Competes For Olympic Spot” (National Public Radio).

“And Keelin — let’s make no mistake about this, this has been incredibly tough, and at times tormenting and tortuous, for Keelin Godsey, a person who identifies fully as a male, and wishes to live as a male in all walks of life. But, it’s his passion for sports and the opportunity to make the Olympic team” that are behind Godsey’s choice, Torre says.

As soon as the Olympics experience ends — either in the U.S. trials or at the Games in London — “Keelin will be taking testosterone, and physically transitioning,” Torre says. “And that’s this other, second dream, beyond Olympic contention, that Keelin hopes to finally fulfill.”

Godsey appeared in a March 11, 2011 video by the GLSEN Sports Project talking coming out as transgender at college and in the sports world. Watch:

Gay players in the NFL

NFL Rookies and Veterans Weigh in on Gay Players
Advocate, May 24, 2012

Several current and retired NFL players say that they and their teammates are ready to welcome a gay player on their team.

Related

• See our LGBT History Month profile of Dave Kopay, the first NFL player and one of the first professional athletes to come out as gay.
• Our story last October on Australian hockey goalie Gus Johnston included a list of resources for LGBT athletes and fans.

Famous people

LZ Granderson writes a weekly column for CNN.com and is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN. He was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, was  2009 winner of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism, and is a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary.

No contradiction: I’m black and gay
CNN, May 22, 2012

I am gay. And I am black.

And despite the efforts of black religious conservatives to ignore that intersection, the truth is that intersection is a major part of black culture. It’s in our literature (James Baldwin), our films (Lee Daniels), in politics, baseball fields (Glenn Burke), the Black Panthers (Angela Davis) and the civil rights movement (Bayard Rustin).

Arts

First & only museum of gay & lesbian art launches
New York, Art Daily, May 14, 2012

NEW YORK, NY.- Even well after the cultural wars of the mid 1980’s, the representation of sexual difference in art has been aggressively policed. And America’s museums, with few notable exceptions, have been silent in the face of what is now the most vocal contemporary civil rights frontier. But there has never been a shortage of gay and lesbian art on display in America’s museums; what has been lacking is the courage to articulate that fact and to illustrate how the artist’s sexuality influenced his/her art. Now, for the first time, a new museum in New York will finally show what has been hiding in plain sight. With the recent accreditation by the State of New York as an official Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (MoGLA) has become the first and only museum of gay and lesbian art in the world.

Politics

Marriage equality

Lesbian couple can file for divorce in Maryland, court rules
Maryland, CNN, May 18, 2012

Maryland’s highest court has ruled that a lesbian couple married out of state can legally file for divorce, even though Maryland’s own same-sex marriage law does not take effect until next year.

Anti-LGBT

Video of North Carolina pastor’s plan to ‘get rid of’ gays goes viral
North Carolina, CNN, May 22, 2012

Video of a North Carolina pastor preaching that gays and lesbians should be rounded up inside an electric fence is going viral on the Internet, two weeks after North Carolina passed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and President Barack Obama voiced personal support for legalizing such marriages.

See the video of Pastor Charles L. Worley (Providence Road Baptist Church) calling for concentration camps for gays and lesbians in Bent Alaska’s May 24 news brief.

Obituary

Lesbian Nuns co-editor Rosemary Curb dies
Windy City Times, May 25, 2012

Dr. Rosemary Keefe Curb, 72, co-editor of one of the bestselling lesbian books of all time, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, has died of complications from lung surgery. Curb, also known as Rosemary Keefe ( her family name ), was co-editor with Dr. Nancy Manahan of the 1985 collection of several dozen essays by current and former nuns.