Second* Professional Footballer comes out

You may never have heard of David Testo, but here he is scoring against AC Milan.



The reason you may not have heard of him is that until now he has he only was a member of a Major League Soccer team, Columbus Crew, for two seasons of his career 2004-5. For most of the first season of that he was injured. But since then he has played for the Vancouver Whitecaps and Montreal Impact in the second tier of American football the North American Soccer League.

However, the out of contract player has announced on Radio Canada that he is gay, therefore possibly doubling the number of the opening out professional footballers.

He former team mate and captain of Impact said:Nevio Pizzolitto said:

"I'm sure it was something that weighed on his mind for a long time, which is why I think he finally came out with it."

"I'm glad he did, because he's in a position where he can inspire a lot of people to do the same. Even though we’re professional athletes, we're also human beings, and maybe something like this will change the minds of those in the same position. What David did was great."

In the extract from the radio interview with Testo he said:

"I'm a homosexual. I'm gay. I didn't choose this. This is just who I am. It's has nothing to do if you're good at soccer. You can still be an amazing soccer player and be gay.

"I really do regret not having come out earlier. It's something that I've struggled with my whole life and career.

"It's hard. Living the life of a professional athlete and being gay is incredibly hard. It's like carrying around a secret. Carrying around luggage and never actually being allowed to just be yourself. Its incredibly energy draining on top of having to perform, on top of having to play.

"I don't know how everyone else feels about it, I never did know. That's what probably is the hardest thing about this is."

He carried on talking about how hard it was an individual to "on a daily basis" to be aware and careful of the things he said, to whom he said them with whom he was seen walking around. He was must upset that when he was named MVP in the 2009 season that he couldn't thank his partner by name. But he also realised that being in the closet was also having an impact on those around him on his teams adding.

"I also think players around me had to do the same towards me, and I felt that. That sucks as a human being."

The player was out of contract and released by Montreal Impact on 12 October, but at the age of 30 might still be picked up by another team for next season. I hope he gets the chance so that he can play his sport alongside team mates being totally who he for a change and to get over the fact that he knows that the having to be careful because of not being open has "sucked" not just for him but for those around him.

* Second current, if we count the late Justin Fashanu there are only three openly out players in history.

Rick Perry pre-empts Letterman Top 10

The one thing that Rick Perry knew when he made that gaffe in the latest Republican debate was that somehow it would end up in one of David Letterman's legendary top tens the following night. However, there is one way to ease the sting and that is what Rick Perry did, he delivered the top ten Rick Perry excuses himself live on the show.

Before the Charge - Patrick MacGill

At 11 o'clock down at the local war memorial I may be wearing my Irish Poppy label along with my poppy . Sadly it will have a biologically incorrect leaf behind it as I haven't been to Scotland in order to get one from there.

But as a mark of the fact that 49,900 from this island gave their lives in the Great War 1914-1918, more from the South than from the North, more Catholic than Protestant. This year I've decided to share a poem from one of the Irish War poets Patrick MacGill.


Before the Charge

The night is still and the air is keen,
Tense with menace the time crawls by,
In front is the town and its homes are seen,
Blurred in outline against the sky.
The dead leaves float in the sighing air,
The darkness moves like a curtain drawn,
A veil which the morning sun will tear
From the face of death. – We charge at dawn.

London Olympic organisers apology for omitting Belfast

That's HMS Belfast not the city on the banks of the Lagan.

Earlier this week the London 2012 organiser had released a advert that shows an iconic stretch of the River Thames without one of that part's icons, the one that sits on the water.

Picture comparison via BBC

They said that the omission of the World War II and Korean War veteran was "a simple mistake in the advertising production process", Bizarrely the ship has been there for 40 years, far longer than City Hall to the fore of the image and many of the buildings around it.

But surely for the ship that has been part of the riverscape for 4 decades to not be there means that the picture had to be airbrushed with the removal of it in the first place. As the image on the Mirror's website shows there was quite a lot of airbrushing done.

The Shard obviously had to be completed. Indeed there is shockingly not a crane visible anywhere on this London skyline. But to take HMS Belfast out altogether needs more explanation that simply being a simple mistake. I'll accept that maybe the image at the river may have needed some touching up, but there is no reason why such a large part of the riverscape needed to be removed to do so.

It's bizarre that such a fundamental omission was allowed to go out, first from the ad agency to London 2012, then to have been signed off from London 2012 to go to press and indeed be put up.

A simple mistake that wasn't picked up along various lines of approval, probably from a number of London based people who know that stretch of the Thames. Draw your own conclusions.

DUP and the Death Penalty Part II

The DUP MPs David Simpson, Sammy Wilson, Jim Shannon, Gregory Campbell and Jeffrey Donaldson say they are backing a motion to discuss the return of the death penalty. They say this issue was last discussed in 1998 in Westminster in 1998 and that it was now time for the debate to be reopened.

Indeed Mr Donaldson had earlier said that he wanted it brought back for convicted terrorists. Time I think to republish a certain photo.

The issue had of course been debated in each parliament since the abolition of the death penalty up until 1998 when it was last put to the house. Ironically the last time it was amended removing the death penalty for treason, piracy and mutiny were all removed from the statute book. Of course for the Death Penalty was removed in 1965 for most of the UK except Northern Ireland when it came to an end in theNorthern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973.

The Belfast Agreement contains the following statement on policing and justice (emphasis mine):

The participants believe it essential that policing structures and arrangements are such that the police service is professional, effective and efficient, fair and impartial, free from partisan political control; accountable, both under the law for its actions and to the community it serves; representative of the society it polices, and operates within a coherent and co-operative criminal justice system, which conforms with human rights norms. The participants also believe that those structures and arrangements must be capable of maintaining law and order including responding effectively to crime and to any terrorist threat and to public order problems. A police service which cannot do so will fail to win public confidence and acceptance. They believe that any such structures and arrangements should be capable of delivering a policing service, in constructive and inclusive partnerships with the community at all levels, and with the maximum delegation of authority and responsibility, consistent with the foregoing principles. These arrangements should be based on principles of protection of human rights and professional integrity and should be unambiguously accepted and actively supported by the entire community.

We were basing a Northern Ireland that was based on norms, ironically in the same week that the final death penalties were being removed from the statute book, in July 1998.

So does Donaldson's statement indicate a unilateral removal of Northern Ireland from the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights in Protocol 6, Article 1 states:

The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.

There are exceptions in time of war, but the DUP are talking about a shared future therefore a peaceful future so hard to find where the war is.

The DUP are saying that one of the reasons they want the debate is "because [they] want to hear the contrary arguments." Interesting that at Stormont quite a lot of the time they refuse to hear the contrary argument (eg The Blood Ban) and make their own decisions without consultation with a contrary position to their own. Curious that the DUP are supporting the 25,000 strong petition to bring back the death penalty and not the contrary reaction based 30,000 strong petition to keep it off the statute books.

Wikio Top Lib Dem Blogs, November 2011

Mark Pack earlier this week announced that his normal look at the Wikio Rankings of top Lib Dem Blogs would be delayed, possibly by two weeks. Knowing how impatient you lot are, here is the list. There are only 16 in the top 100 this month as both Stephen Tall and


1 (6) Liberal Democrat Voice No change
2 (16) Jack of Kent No change
3 (21) Craig Murray Up 27
4 (25) Caron’s Musings Down 6
5 (41) Mark Pack Up 9
6 (43) Liberal England Down 2
7 (53) Paul Walter Up 6
8 (64) Peter Black Up 1
9 (67) Liberal Vision Down 6
10 (78) Mark Thompson Down 18
11 (80) George Potter No Change
12 (81) Nick Thornsby Down 22
13 (88) Spiderplant Land Down 22
14 (89) Stephen Glenn Up 6
15 (94) Miss S B Down 20
16 (95) Lynne Featherstone  Down 1

Again Christian's mistakenly compare LGBT equality to totalitarian fascism

There is always an issue when you start to compare any group to Nazis. You'd better be careful just what words you use to refer to yourself by in doing so, also you better be fully aware of what groups were targeted by the Germans in the 30s and 40s.

It is a lesson that Alan Craig of the Christian Peoples Alliance would do well to heed as he decided to write about "Confronting the Gaystapo" in last week's Church of England newspaper.

He talks for example about facism, then talks of the German Nazis "intended assault on our civilization, our values, our way of life." Seeing as facism can be defined simply as:

the tenets of a centralized totalitarian and nationalistic government that strictly controls finance, industry, and commerce, practices rigid censorship and racism, and eliminates opposition through secret police.

Is the argument that there is only one way that things can be done just such a regime. Isn't a totalitarianism just that sort of thing. I'm not jumping to a false conclusion here he goes on to say:

Our civilisation, our values, our way of life – indeed the national character – are inevitably formed from the values of the Christian faith, as over a thousand years and more 'Christianity' and 'Englishness' have become fully entwined and fused.

Strange that in that 1000 years or more just what an Englishman's take on Christianity is has been known to change at the whim of the Sovereign. Obviously it became slightly defused and refused to a different strand through Tudor times.

He refers to same-sex marriage, although I'd want to correct him to equal marriage, it is the way he does so in light of his other Nazi imagery as SSM, the parallel to the Schutzstaffel, Hitler's SS cannot be accidental.

He makes two rather sweeping generalisations:

In recent decades gay militants have been in the van of the secularist and new atheist assault on Christianity, and as a consequence our culture has corroded and debased and national confusion and self-doubt has grown.

Christian believers have been a lone voice against the resulting sexualisation, narcissism, hedonism, selfishness and materialism.

This ignores two things. Firstly not all those who are attracted to people of the same sex are atheist, many of us have come through the churches. Many of us remain in the churches not because they are totally accepting of who we are, often in spite of how sometimes our churches refuse us into full communion because of so-called pastoral guidelines that emphasis one human condition above all others as being singled out for exclusion. I'll let you guess what that is but by the general tenet of this blog post you should work it out easily. Many of those who are LGB that have been turned off religion have been done so by the church itself, there's a willingness to accept drunkards, work with prostitutes, aid drug addicts etc, but there is a cold shoulder often given to those who say they love someone of the same gender.

The other thing that has been pointed out during the recent occupy movement outside St. Paul's is the admission charges to get into the most recognised centre of the Church of England for whom Mr Craig has no issue writing for. Christ himself turned out the money changers in the Temple for desecrating his Father's House through their commercial practices. Just who is charging materialistically for the narcissism of seeing the work of man's hands? Isn't it selfish to say "no you can't have".

Looking at the calls for equal marriage it is just that a call for equalness, not to usurp anything. Indeed most of those calling for equality are merely asking for religious groups to have the opportunity to take part, if they want, not forcing them to do anything. But also marriage has been open to those outside of religion for longer than homosexual acts have been legal in this country. Hedonism is not restricted to the LGB communities look at any high street on a weekend evening and you will see straight couple behaving hedonisticly. Not every high street has a LGBT friendly bar.

So stop laying all the ills of this world on one group, especially when you complain about them saying wanting long term relationships when you claim they are hedonistic. Surely wanting to have access to long term committed relationships is a sign of the opposite. If you deny that then you are building the stereotype that you can't have a long term commitment.

Update The Church of England Newspaper has backed its decision to publish the piece as it appeared saying the writer had some "pertinent views".