{"id":25378,"date":"2012-09-15T17:57:45","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T17:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25378"},"modified":"2015-07-13T20:00:33","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T20:00:33","slug":"brendon-ayanbadejo-baltimore-ravens-linebacker-talks-gay-marriage-and-lgbt-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25378","title":{"rendered":"Brendon Ayanbadejo, Baltimore Ravens Linebacker, Talks Gay Marriage And LGBT Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/09\/12\/brendon-ayanbadejo-baltimore-ravens-gay-marriage-homophobia-jamie-kuntz_n_1877048.html\" target=\"_blank\">Brendon Ayanbadejo, Baltimore Ravens Linebacker, Talks Gay Marriage And LGBT Rights<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Huffington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2012-09-12<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:mike.signorile@huffingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">Michelangelo Signorile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Baltimore_Ravens\" target=\"_blank\">Baltimore Ravens<\/a> linebacker <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brendon_Ayanbadejo\" target=\"_blank\">Brendon Ayanbadejo<\/a> is going \u201cfull steam ahead\u201d after his battle with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maryland\" target=\"_blank\">Maryland<\/a> legislator <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emmett_C._Burns,_Jr.\" target=\"_blank\">C. Emmett Burns Jr.<\/a>, who last week wrote a letter calling on the team\u2019s owner to silence Ayanbadejo regarding his public advocacy of gay marriage, only to back down amid a national uproar. (Listen to the full interview below)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Ravens reached out to me,\u201d Ayanbadejo said. \u201c[Ravens president] Dick Cass and [Ravens] owner Steve Bisciotti said, \u2018Brendon, you\u2019re a great person. Keep doing your thing. We believe in you. This is not a team that believes in discrimination in any way, shape, or form. You have this tremendous platform here. Use it. And go ahead and continue to be you, and grow and shape and change the world while you have the ability to do it.\u2019\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Discussing what motivates him to take up the cause of LGBT equality and gay marriage, Ayanbadejo pointed to his upbringing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a product of two biracial parents &#8212; so actually, I\u2019m not biracial, but I\u2019m a product of it,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cMy dad is Nigerian. My mom is Irish-American. So I kind of never really fit in. From the black community, I was considered white. From the white community, I was considered black. And then from my own Nigerian community, I wasn\u2019t considered Nigerian. I was considered a black American. <strong>I kind of never fit in, kind of had to find my own niche and find my own way. So I\u2019ve experienced discrimination at a young age, and it\u2019s made me the person who I am today.<\/strong>\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/09\/12\/brendon-ayanbadejo-baltimore-ravens-gay-marriage-homophobia-jamie-kuntz_n_1877048.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brendon Ayanbadejo, Baltimore Ravens Linebacker, Talks Gay Marriage And LGBT Rights The Huffington Post 2012-09-12 Michelangelo Signorile Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo is going \u201cfull steam ahead\u201d after his battle with Maryland legislator C. Emmett Burns Jr., who last week wrote a letter calling on the team\u2019s owner to silence Ayanbadejo regarding his public advocacy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,666,13743,8,26,20],"tags":[11863,11861,11869,8952,10108,5972,11868,7222,2425],"class_list":["post-25378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-gaylesbian","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-baltimore-ravens","tag-brendon-ayanbadejo","tag-c-emmett-burns-jr","tag-football","tag-huffington-post","tag-maryland","tag-michelangelo-signorile","tag-sports","tag-the-huffington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}