Last time we checked in with the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association (NAGAA), they were being sued for allegedly discriminating against three bisexual male players who weren’t gay enough to play in the 2008 Gay Softball World Series. Queerty contributor Ryan Tedder even went so far as to say, “If Bi Or Straight Baseball Players Want to Play in the Gay League, We Should Let Them.”
But we’re not the only ones with an opinion on the matter. Enter Taiwan’s high-larious Next Media Animation. Yes, they mocked our enemies’ worst fears by dressing up Elton John’s baby in leather, but their deliciously wicked send-up of the softball lawsuit has rainbow jerseys, a gay hissy fit, pink gestapo, and even a phallometric device—why can’t the straight World Series be this awesome?
The SLOG’s Eli Sanders wrote extensively about the federal lawsuit currently pending against the NAGAAA and got some clarification from NAGAAA commissioner Roy Melani.
“Melani said. “But you need to hear the other side of the story. This is a really hot button for me. They are at the Gay World Series. Is it unreasonable for someone to say, ‘Are you gay?’ at the Gay World Series? It is not.”
Even so, did this particular line of “Are you gay?” questioning go a bit off the rails?
“They have said that this is a kangaroo court that they were brought in front of,” Melani replied. “In no way, shape, or form was it done like that.”
Central to Melani’s account is his contention that the D2 players never said at the hearing that they were bisexual. “If they’d have said that,” he told me, “we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
At the time, the policies of NAGAAA allowed bisexual players to play in the Gay Softball World Series and not be counted as straight, said Leishman, admitting, “Some people seem to have been confused.”
But he contends that no one with a vote on the tribunal was confused, nor did any of the voting members make any statement about it being “the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.”
In any case, [Melani’s lawyer Roger Leishman] said, the gay softball association’s policies have now been clarified. Bisexuals are even more explicitly allowed to play in the world series—as are lesbians, transgender people, and limited numbers of straight people—and the way the organization determines a person’s sexuality is simple: self-declaration. “We don’t have cards, we don’t have pink triangles, and no one’s gaydar is perfect,” said Leishman. “All you can do is ask.”
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Just as an aside, I found one of these Taiwanese animated news pieces about Americans who thought Obama is a Muslim, and found it really funny, so I sent a link to a friend who had grown up in Hong Kong. His reaction was to treat it as a real news broadcast and was quite different from mine. I think a large part of the difference in reaction is that he could understand the narration (which was in Mandarin) and I could pick out only a few words every so often and reacted purely to the images. Also, he was more aware of the use of animation in news programs than I was, since this is rarely done in the U.S.
While the animation is supposed to be fun, some Taiwanese apparently think it is a bit tacky, possibly the result of a station not having enough of a budget to hire a camera crew for all the stories they run (or maybe not being willing to pay license fees to use some other organization’s video).