Gays

HARRISBURG - Perennial fixtures on the legislative calendar, bills to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation have gone nowhere in the last decade. This time, the tables may be turning. Companion bills in the House and Senate have attracted a record number of cosponsors, among them the General Assembly's first two openly gay lawmakers, while a new poll shows solid majority support across the state for such a ban. The bills, introduced Tuesday with 102 cosponsors including both Republicans and Democrats, would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression in employment, housing, credit, and public accommodations.

  Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and niece of former President Fidel Castro, told a Philadelphia gay-rights conference Saturday of her efforts to promote equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Cubans. Castro, who was to receive an award Saturday night for her advocacy, also defended her country's government, which has been accused of repressing political dissent. "There is not any government or any country who has the right to impose or make decisions to the other ones regarding the human-rights area," she said.

State Rep. Brian K. Sims, the first openly gay candidate to win a legislative election in Pennsylvania, recently was asked by another lawmaker to explain a proposed antidiscrimination measure. " 'Tell me about your gay bill,' " Sims recalled Rep. Mario Scavello, a Monroe County Republican, asking him on the floor of the House. Three other Republicans who were nearby listened as Sims argued that it was overdue for Pennsylvania to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories such as race, religion, age, and disability.

THE COMING-OUT part is over. Now Jason Collins needs a job. Collins' stunning announcement that he was a gay athlete in a major sport won overwhelming support from other players, coaches and executives - even a phone call from the president. But it also came after the season ended for the 7-foot center and his Washington Wizards. The 34-year-old journeyman becomes a free agent on July 1 - meaning he will first have to sign with an NBA team and wait until next season to see if teammates, coaches, opponents and fans will treat him any differently.

If we're being honest here, the first gay professional athlete in the United States probably played baseball for the New York Mutuals or the Chicago White Stockings of the old National Association in the 1870s. So Jason Collins' brave announcement, made Monday via Sports Illustrated magazine's website, was about 140 years in the making. That makes him sort of the Jackie Robinson of gay players and sort of the opposite. Robinson didn't get to play 12 years in the major leagues, proving himself as a person and a player and a teammate, before revealing that he was a black man. His shattering of the color barrier was an act of personal courage on his part and moral fortitude on the part of Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

State Rep. Brian K. Sims, a Philadelphia Democrat, was cocaptain of the Bloomsburg University football team in 2000 when he confirmed to his teammates that he was gay. They didn't mind. It was not until 2009 that Sims told that story to the world in an interview with Outsports.com. He already was a gay-rights advocate in Philadelphia, but the football revelation was a sensation. "I still hear from people all over the world every day because of the article," said Sims, who last year became the first openly gay candidate to win a Pennsylvania legislative race.

REVIEW the tweeters and the commenters and you will realize just how unremarkable Jason Collins' declaration is. Collins will appear on the May 6 cover of Sports Illustrated , the subject of a first-person piece in which he announces his homosexuality. He presents himself as the first active male professional athlete to come out. Unless you are a severe hoops junkie, you probably do not know who Jason Collins is. Unless you are severely socially retarded, you probably do not care he is gay. For decades, the United States, home of a sports mania that has eclipsed all other forms of entertainment and information, has wondered what sort of social earthquake would erupt when a superjock acknowledged his sexual orientation was not hyper-hetero.

WASHINGTON - With the simplest of sentences, NBA veteran Jason Collins set aside years of worry and silence to become the first active player in one of the four major U.S. professional sports leagues to come out as gay. In a first-person article posted Monday on Sports Illustrated's website, Collins begins: "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay. " Collins has played for six teams in 12 seasons, most recently as a reserve with the Washington Wizards after a midseason trade from the Boston Celtics.

PARIS - France legalized gay marriage Tuesday after a wrenching national debate that has exposed deep social conservatism in the nation's heartland and triggered huge protests in Paris from both sides of the divide. Legions of officers with water cannon braced outside the National Assembly for possible violence on an issue that galvanized the country's faltering right. The measure passed easily in the Socialist-majority Assembly, 331-225, just minutes after the president of the legislative body expelled a disruptive protester in pink, the color adopted by French opponents of gay marriage.