The You Can Play Project

It's odd sometimes how fiction can echo real life, or one can follow the other. My book that is coming out in May and the sequel that I have finished and is out to beta readers Donna Hole and Jeff Adams (embedded links to their websites) features a protagonist who is among many things, a gay collegiate hockey player (in the first book he's in high school). In the second book, he plays on the Cornell hockey team as a forward and really...no one cares. They just care about his skill. He's fully out, everyone likes him, and he leads a healthy life as a student athlete. But was I really writing fiction? At the time that I first started drafting it over a year ago...I might have been tempted to say yes.Now...not so much. The world is changing, despite the rhetoric from the right-wing that would have Santorum stripping homosexuals of their human rights.I can't say how happy I am (and a little stunned) that the NHL is THE FIRST organization to step forward and make it known that a man's sexual orientation should not matter in sports. It's a person's ability to play that should be measured.Please go and visit the You Can Play Project and voice your support (or do so here in the comments). Locker rooms and sports venues should be free of homophobia. Athletes should only be judged on skill and work ethic.Anyway, this is a great public service announcement. Go check out the background on this fantastic movement by reading the article at the Washington Post. Have a great Monday.

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