Letters: Gays in sports? Nothing new.

Re “Gay and playing the field,” Column One, Oct. 21

I was somewhat amused by this article’s take on the “new” phenomenon of sports in the gay community.

In 1961, I frequented a gay bar in Silver Lake, where the patrons were both gay men and women who became not just bar buddies but friends who socialized outside the bar scene. One night I suggested we go bowling at Hollywood Star Lanes on Santa Monica Boulevard, and from that one outing, we started going regularly and soon formed the Sunset Mixers league. We made a mostly successful effort to keep the teams mixed-gender.

Today I count more than 20 men and women who were “Mixers” as friends today. Among those friends was my then-partner Burt, who joined the league in 1966 and whom I married on Sept. 1of this year after nearly 47 years together.

Sports is just catching on in the gay community? I think not.

Jim Carroll

Burbank

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