Gay Softball lawsuit settled

The stupidity of San Francisco is a gift that just keeps giving.

Three members of an amateur San Francisco team who said they were branded "not gay enough" and stripped of their second-place finish at the Gay Softball World Series have settled their lawsuit against a national gay sports organization.

Steven Apilado, LaRon Charles and Jon Russ, who were members of D2, a team that was part of the San Francisco Gay Softball League, will receive an undisclosed sum from the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance and will get their second-place 2008 championship trophy back, said their attorney, Suzanne Thomas reports the San Francisco Chronicle.


Three members of an amateur San Francisco team who said they were branded "not gay enough" and stripped of their second-place finish at the Gay Softball World Series have settled their lawsuit.


"This is an amazing result," Thomas said Monday. "It's also an opportunity to put a spotlight on significant discrimination in sports against the LBGT community, and going forward we will look at this as an opportunity to provide additional education about this discrimination."

Roger Leishman, an attorney for the alliance, said the settlement Friday came a week after U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle ruled that the group had the right under the First Amendment to limit the number of heterosexuals who could play on a team to two.

"It is reasonable that an organization seeking to limit participation to gay athletes would require members to express whether or not they are gay athletes," Coughenour wrote.

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