UK rugby star Ben Cohen and retired MLB
player Billy Bean cheered two recent Supreme Court rulings related to
gay marriage.
The openly straight Cohen retired from
rugby in 2011 and launched the Ben
Cohen StandUp Foundation to combat homophobia and the bullying of
LGBT teens. Cohen is particularly interested in promoting greater
acceptance in the world of sports.
Bean announced he's gay in 1999 and
talked about his experience in his 2003 memoir Going the Other
Way: Lessons from a life in and out of Major League Baseball.
Bean was an outfielder and a left-handed hitter who played in the MLB
for 8 years ending in 1995. He played for the Detroit Tigers, the
Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Diego Padres and Japan's Kintetsu
Baffaloes for one season. He currently resides in Los Angeles, where
he sells real estate. Bean recently joined Cohen's foundation.
“As LGBT people, a lot of us are used
to conforming to whoever we're with and we've learned to suppress who
we are,” Bean told gay glossy The
Advocate at San Francisco
Gay Pride. “But the Supreme Court rulings have made it
easier for us to really share who we are going forward.”
Cohen added: “There's no doubt it's
an historic moment and a step in the right direction to drive
cultural change.”
“I think the Supreme Court's rulings
are a huge step towards furthering the education of how the next
generation will treat one another,” he added.