He was born in Boston in 1978.

He played basketball for Vanderbilt University and Penn State University in the 1990s.  He was a two-time All American selection while in Penn State.

Amaechi began his career in professional basketball in 1995 with the Cleveland Cavaliers. A year later, he traveled to Europe and played in France, Italy and Greece for three years before returning to America to play for the Orlando Magic in 1999.  Amaechi left the Magic in 2001 to play for the Utah Jazz.  He retired in 2003.

Amaechi publicly came out as gay in 2007. He appeared on LOGO Television’s reality-based program Shirts and Skins in 2008.

Logo is inviting 365gay readers to chime in.

Here’s the request from Logo:

During the Equality March, Logo will be ‘dark’ as a symbol of solidarity …but this is also an opportunity to let viewers know why the march is so important.  In a ticker, we may highlight issues of inequality across the country (eg. Florida adoption laws),  but we also want to make the event feel human, personal & real.  

This is where you come in.  Tell us, in a sentence, why you think the march is important and we may include your message on-air as well.  

Serious examples:
I’m marching so my partner and I can adopt our foster children.  
I’m marching because marriage is a civil right.

Fun examples:
I’m marching so I can hold hands when I go shopping with my girlfriend.
I’m marching because socially aware guys are hot!

Looking forward to your response!

What do you think, readers? Post your response below, or email it to me at jennifer.vanasco [at] mtvstaff ][dot] com

Oh you gotta love the Palin household. Sure Sarah Palin isn’t the vice-president, but her brood continues to make crazy gossipy drama.

Now before some conservative troll flips, I got nothing against household travails. Buy me a slice of cherry pie and I’ll regal you with tales of Withers’ hot mess (my personal favorite is my father and uncle knocking over the Thanksgiving table in a tussle); however, it’s a good idea to keep those family hijinks on the down-low. You would think hockey mom Palin would know that, but noooooo. She and her clan are keeping us all entertained with public charges, counter charges, and furious press releases.

First there was Levi Johnston, former fiance of Palin’s daughter Bristol, going on TV spilling all the beans. He spent nights in the Palin household, the Alaska governor probably knew the young couple were doing the nasty, he can’t get any alone time with his own son, etc., etc. Palin issued a press release calling Johnston out, which was odd. Why is a state governor letting some youngster get under her skin?

Now Sarah Palin’s father is getting his two cents in.

“I don’t agree with what he’s doing right now,” said Chuck Heath. “It’s not right. He’s broke, so he’s trying to capitalize on this. I wish he’d take some of this money he’s making and buy some diapers with it.”

Grandpa Heath? Why are you talking? And why isn’t your daughter telling her brood to keep family business on the hush-hush?

Dear Logo bosses: give the Palins their own reality show. Imagine the money baby! Think Bobby and Whitney times 3.

It’s a gorgeous mid-September Tuesday evening in New York City and the setting sun warmly glows over the streets of Midtown. Chelsea, New York’s gayest enclave, shifts into party mode just a few blocks south. To the northeast, the world is starting to queue up for Broadway hits. Meanwhile, commuters rush to the comforts of home.

But for thousands of gay youth in Gotham, there will be no partying, no theater, no playing tonight.

And once again, no home.

Estimates say that a staggering 20,000 young people are homeless every night in the city, – anywhere from a quarter to a third of those are LGBTQ kids. A lucky fraction of that number has found its way to Sylvia’s Place, tucked here on the city’s far west side, so near and so far from so much wealth.

Sylvia’s Place is the subject of a new documentary shot in 2006 which followed seven LGBT teens who frequented the shelter. To see what Sylvia’s place is like now, I step into this surreal and humbling world to meet with Kate Barnhart, director of Sylvia’s Place since 2004.

Tonight, like every Tuesday evening, dinner is being served by a small team of volunteers from the adjacent Metropolitan Community Church of New York. I take a seat on a metal folding chair next to Kate’s desk, not quite sure where to put my manpurse amidst the overflowing boxes, plastic bags, and just plain stuff that’s everywhere. She motions for me to throw it into the area behind her, with a dozen other backpacks and handbags.

“Behind my body is the safest place, so everyone stashes their stuff back here,” she says.

Sylvia’s takes its name from Sylvia Mae Rivera, a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising who just a year later co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), an assistance group for the city’s young homeless trans community.

In the late 1990s Rev. Pat Bumgardner, senior pastor of the MCC, hired Rivera to run the church’s food pantry, only to be amazed by the crowds of young queer folk in need drawn by the charismatic activist. On Rivera’s deathbed (from liver cancer in 2002), Bumgardner promised that the church would create a safe space and night shelter for desperate LGBTQ youth who had nowhere else to go.

And so Sylvia’s Place was born in early 2003, and has ever since provided disenfranchised young gay people aged 16 to 23 with such simple necessities as dinner, bathroom facilities, somewhere to sleep for the night, breakfast in the morning, and – perhaps most important – a listening ear and an encouraging voice.

They do all this on a ridiculously small budget, with a shoestring staff of mostly volunteers, in one 2,500-square foot room, despite the (quite understandable) unpredictability of the clientele.

NEXT PAGE: ‘We take people until we can’t fit anymore.’

A look at Governor Sarah Palin’s positions on LGBT issues.