Despite no longer playing in the National Football League, Michael Sam, the first openly gay player drafted into the NFL, continues to pursue his love of football, taking on a job as a coach for a team in Spain.
Hired by the Barcelona Dragons, Sam, a former defensive end, will be an assistant defensive line coach, will be working with defensive linemen and edge rushers.
“I am extremely grateful for the opportunity joining the Barcelona Dragons organization,” Sam said in a statement published on the team’s Instagram page. “I want to thank GM Bart Iaccarino, HC Andrew Weidinger, and the Barcelona team. I hope to contribute however I can to help the defensive line to be the best pass rushers in the European League.”
Barcelona Dragons logo
Now 32 years old, Sam made history as the first openly gay player in the NFL when he was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in 2014. Although he was part of the team’s official 90-man preseason roster, and played a few preseason games, he failed to make the final 53-man roster and never played in a regular season game. He was later picked up by the Dallas Cowboys and added to their practice squad, but was released before ever seeing the field.
In May 2015, Sam made history again, signing with a Canadian Football League team (the Montreal Alouettes) and becoming the first openly gay player in the CFL. His time in the CFL would be rocky; at one point, Sam returned to his home in Texas due to unstated personal reasons. However, Sam did get the opportunity to play in an actual game for the Alouettes.
Sam’s football playing career would come to an end just a couple months later with him announcing retirement in August 2015 for mental health reasons.
Though Sam’s time playing professional football was brief, he made history twice — becoming the first openly gay player in two separate leagues. Now, he will have a chance to carve an even more impactful legacy as a coach.
Roman Catholic priests will continue to be permitted to offer blessings to individuals in same-sex relationships under Pope Leo XIV, maintaining a policy approved by his predecessor, Pope Francis, that has drawn criticism from conservative Catholics.
The continuation of the policy was confirmed on July 3 by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, in an interview with the Rome-based daily Il Messaggero. The Vatican did not issue an official statement, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
The Metropolitan Police Department is asking for the public’s help in solving the fatal shooting of a transgender woman in Northeast D.C.
Dream Johnson, 28, was reportedly walking along Benning Road NE, between the Carver Langston and Kingman Park neighborhoods, when she was shot in the early morning hours of Saturday, July 5.
According to a news release from the Metropolitan Police Department, officers from MPD’s Sixth District were flagged down in the 2000 block of Benning Road NE for an unconscious woman. When they arrived, they found a female victim -- later identified as Johnson -- suffering from gunshot wounds.
I first saw Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain in 2005, at a three-screen, not-for-profit cinema in suburban Washington state. I went with my then-boyfriend, and for the next two hours and fourteen minutes, I wept silently next to him.
At 16, I came into political consciousness as the second Bush administration fought to maintain a conservative bulwark against progress by endorsing a constitutional amendment defining marriage in strictly heterosexual terms. While I was out, I felt righteously angry that others felt I should hide who I knew myself to be.
Twenty years after the film's release, Brokeback Mountain returned to theaters. The end of June also marked a decade of nationwide marriage equality thanks to Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court granted homosexual couples the "equal dignity" afforded to our heterosexual counterparts. Today, I go to the movies with my husband. And sitting in the cool, dark of the cinema last week, I reflected on the ways Brokeback Mountain helped change the national discourse and still resonates in deep, meaningful ways for people across the country.
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