Activist Lesbian Becomes 1st in U.S. to Own Major League Sports Team
A lesbian activist has acquired the Chicago Cubs--and she says that anti-gay prejudice is the last thing she's encountered. Rather, she's had to deal with mundane issues like the state of the facilities: real-world problems, rather than biases emanating from myths and stereotypes.
Laura Ricketts, 42, and her family bought the Cubs last year, reports Chicago LGBT paper Windy City Times in a Feb. 24 article. The process involved close scrutiny from the baseball league--but nothing about it was homophobic, Ricketts told the paper. "They wanted to know all the organizations we're involved with, where we went to school, where we invested and the jobs we've had," she said. "They do a pretty extensive background check. In terms of the LGBT issue, it was never an issue at all."
The article noted that Ricketts is politically and socially active, involved in board positions with organizations as diverse as Housing Opportunities for Women and Lambda Legal, one of the nation's premiere legal organizations for LGBT issues. Ricketts suggested that living openly and honestly was the best strategy to countering stereotypes and misperceptions about LGBT people.
Fans are also optimistic about the Cubs under their new ownership, not least the new owners themselves, who have started their tenure with the slogan, "Year One." A Feb. 19 Chicago Tribune quoted Tom Ricketts as saying, "There's no point talking about what happened in the past," and guaranteeing that despite a 102-year dry spell, "there is no curse, there is no curse, there is no curse," when it comes to winning the World Series, "and if anybody on our team thinks he's cursed, we'll move him to a less accursed team."