The Paris Foot Gay team says Tuesday it received an e-mail from the Creteil Bebel club canceling a match scheduled for last Sunday.

“Because of the principles of our team, which is a team of devout Muslims, we can’t play against you,” the e-mail said, according to Paris Foot Gay. The e-mail received Saturday said, “Our convictions are much more important than a simple football match.”

Paris Foot Gay said in a statement that it asked the amateur league to sanction Creteil Bebel.

Zahir Belgarbi, identified as a spokesman for Creteil Bebel, told France-Info radio he apologized if “anyone felt upset or hurt.”

During his career he played for the Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers, Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Minnesota Vikings.

After retiring in 1999, Tuaolo revealed to the public that he is gay, during a 2002 scene of HBO’s Real Sports.

In 2006, he published a book about it titled, Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL.

Since then, he has been working to decrease homophobia in the NFL by serving as a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.

Tuaolo is the third NFL player in history to publicly announce that he is gay.

The announcement by the FGG comes after a year-long site selection process that culminated in formal presentations by bidding cities to the FGG Membership Assembly meeting this week in Cologne, Germany, site of the 2010 Gay Games. Boston, Mass., and Washington, D.C., were the other two finalists.

“Cleveland demonstrated to the Federation of Gay Games that they understood the mission of the Gay Games and our principles of ‘Participation, Inclusion, and Personal Best’,” said Kurt Dahl (Chicago) and Emy Ritt (Paris), FGG Co-Presidents. “We were highly impressed by the facilities and infrastructure, the widespread community sport, their financial plan and the city’s experience in hosting large scale sports and cultural events.”

“The City of Cleveland is prepared to roll out the welcome mat to the LGBT athletes, their families and spectators from around the world,” said Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson.  “Fans of the Gay Games will find that Cleveland is a great place to celebrate sports and culture and that we have tremendous assets and amenities for them to enjoy.  The sports and cultural environment here is truly a uniquely Cleveland experience, one they will cherish for years to come.”

“We are extremely honoured and pleased that Cleveland has been selected to host the 2014 Gay Games,” said W. Doug Anderson, spokesperson for Cleveland Synergy Foundation, the bidding organization. “It is truly a privilege to continue Dr. Tom Waddell’s legacy and vision in our city – an extremely enthusiastic sports town – where the guiding principles of personal best, inclusion and participation are held dear.  We are also pleased to be considered and selected from among two of the greatest cities in the world – Boston and Washington, D.C. – and greatly appreciate the support of both cities as Cleveland hosts the Gay Games in 2014.”

The Gay Games is a quadrennial sports and cultural festival founded in 1982 by Olympic decathlete Dr. Tom Waddell. Drawing as many as 12,000 participants, more than the Olympics, Gay Games have been held in San Francisco (1982, 1986), Vancouver (1990), New York (1994), Amsterdam (1998), Sydney (2002), and Chicago (2006). The 2010 Gay Games (www.games-cologne.com) will take place in Cologne, Germany, from 31 July to 7 August 2010.

Cleveland’s 2014 Gay Games IX Sports & Cultural Festival is scheduled to take place 9 to 16 August 2014. The 8-day event will feature 30 sports, 4 cultural events, an Opening and Closing Ceremony and community and cultural events throughout the Cleveland metropolitan area. Gay Games generate $50 to $80 million in estimated local economic impact in additional to significant ongoing travel and tourism visibility benefits for the host city.

The announcement was carried live worldwide via webcast. A recording of the announcement can be viewed at http://www.livestream.com/2014GayGames.

Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya says the international athletics governing body failed to safeguard the confidentiality of the runner whose sex has been questioned. She says they showed “blatant disregard” for Semenya’s “human dignity.”

The complaint made Monday asks the UN Division for the Advancement of Women to investigate the matter.

The International Association of Athletics Federations has refused to confirm or deny Australian media reports saying sex tests show that the women’s 800-meter world champion has both male and female characteristics.

Semenya underwent both blood and chromosome tests as well as a gynecological exam.

AP also reports that the IAAF has neither confirmed nor denied the claims made by the Sydney Daily Telegraph about Semenya’s biological make-up.

Pink News reported these claims:

“The report said the 18-year-old has three times the usual level of testosterone for a woman and has internal testes rather than ovaries and a uterus.

“Semenya was hailed as a heroine in her country when she won the 800m in 1min 55.45 secs but since she arrived at the Berlin Athletics contest, there have been rumors over her apparent facial hair and masculine appearance.

“The athlete is currently keeping a low profile but her mother has reacted angrily to the latest report, telling South Africa’s Star newspaper that she and Semenya’s father had not been consulted over developments.”

In addition, Semenya has also pulled out of a race amid the public controversy. She will not run in a 4,000 meters Cross Country championship on Saturday.

Selena Watkins is a 365gay.com editorial intern

Some sports for this midweek (Happy 9/9/09 by the way). My local watering hole is a gay sports bar. Now I would prefer if the place had go-go boys dancing in jockstraps, but some dreams are not to be. Being TV free means I’m at the bar on the weekends cheering either the Spurs, Tarheels, Knicks, or Mets (the last two teams break my heart but why focus on the negative?).

This week has been about the US Open. Excited about Melanie Oudin and her run. Want to see Novak Djokovic break through and take the prize.  Love Serena and Venus Williams, but don’t think they play good tennis when they face each other.

I’ve never seen the Open live and up close, but I know what not to do if I ever go. Never rush on the court. Last night Rafael Nadal was changing his shirt after winning his match against Gael Monfils (6-7, 6-3, 6-1, 6-3). Some guy, clearly entranced by a shirtless Nadal, ran on the court and  embraced the athlete before being escorted off by security.

“He was a great fan,” Nadal said. “He said, ‘I love you,’ and he kiss me.”

Sure the whole scene turned out to be harmless and if I saw  Nadal shirtless I might engage in some foolishness, but come on US Open security. You have to do better than this.

Any tennis fans out there? What do you think about this year’s Open?

PS: thanks to Dan Savage for this funny video.

Clearly, Lippi needs to take an eye-opening trip to Milan.

There’s a gay soccer team there, competing weekly in an amateur league. The players’ sexuality doesn’t affect how they play. The ball, after all, is round for everyone.

Last season, Nuova Kaos Milano finished a creditable fourth in its league of 16 teams, not bad considering their opponents frequently try harder against them to avoid the “dishonor” of losing to gay players, says Nuova Kaos defender Klaus Heusslein.

“Here, people think, ‘They have to share the same changing room. Who knows what might happen if they have gays in the locker room? They might attack people,’” says Heusslein, a 48-year-old German who lives and works in Milan.

“In Italy, it will take another 100 years to get rid of these misconceptions.”

How depressing.

It’s a terrible blemish on soccer that homophobia remains so rife in the sport. As long as there are no openly gay players in the English Premier League and elsewhere at the top of the game, the shiny gloss bought by soccer’s wealth – in new stadiums, multimillionaire players and such like – is nothing but cheap veneer.

That players have their own perfume and fashion lines but still don’t feel safe enough to be able to say that they are gay is a damning indictment on the sport. The smoke-filled backrooms may have vanished, but archaic mentalities remain. That was proved by the hooliganism that scarred an English League Cup match between West Ham and Millwall this week, where several hundred people confronted each other and hurled bottles and bricks at police officers. Those likely were the same kind of so-called fans who have taunted players with racist and homophobic abuse.

True, soccer is not alone in being behind the times. Institutional intolerance in many sports has meant that far too few top-level athletes have felt comfortable saying they are gay. All the more reason, therefore, why the world’s most popular sport should take the lead. Peddling outdated views, as Lippi did this week, does soccer no favors. His comments were particularly unseemly given recent violence that has targeted gays in Rome.

Lippi, in a video interview with the Internet-broadcast program KlausCondicio, said he would advise gay players to stay in the closet. Because of the huge amount of attention that soccer gets in Italy, a gay soccer couple would create scandal if they came out, he argued.

“If a player came to me and confessed his homosexuality, I’d advise him not to express it, because it would create problems and could be exploited,” he said. “I don’t think it would be possible in football to have a relationship of this type. Maybe it already exists, I don’t know.”

Somewhere in Italy, perhaps in the national team he coaches or in the Serie A sides that Lippi once managed or played for, secretly gay players must have been shaking their heads.

Heusslein, the openly gay amateur, certainly did.

“It’s just repeating the same old stereotypes,” he said. “He’s either blind or he’s stupid.”

“He should ask himself what really would be the problem if he had gays on his team. Would that change his capacity to play, would it change his skills?” Heusslein asked. “People should see what they are doing on the field, not what they doing in their own bedrooms.”

According to British gay-rights campaigners, mentalities are only moderately more enlightened in the Premier League. The chanting of homophobic abuse by fans has been banned, on paper at least, at grounds since the start of the 2007-2008 season, and police this year charged 11 men who hurled abuse at former England defender Sol Campbell.

Nevertheless, the only top British player to date to have gone public was Justin Fashanu. The former Nottingham Forest and Norwich City striker hanged himself in 1998, fearful that because he was gay he wouldn’t get a fair trial in the United States on sexual assault charges.

Activist Peter Tatchell, a friend of Fashanu’s, says he knows of several gay players in the Premier League who want to come out but dare not because they are concerned that their clubs and sponsors wouldn’t support them. This despite the fact that Tatchell believes British soccer has progressed sufficiently since Fashanu’s death for gay players to be able to go public.

“They’d get a rough ride from some teammates and some fans for a while, but eventually it would calm down and most people would accept them,” he says. “They’d also get quite a lot of support and admiration from liberal-minded fans.”

That day, when it comes, will be a moment to celebrate because it will show that soccer is becoming the all-inclusive sport it professes to be. As a leader in the sport, Lippi should be a force for such progress, not standing in its way.

International track officials initiated the tests before Caster Semenya won the 800-meter world championship in Germany, and results are awaited. That did not mute the mood Friday in her home village, which she is visiting for the first time since the race.

Relatives and others at the celebration say they want to support Semenya so she can continue to succeed. They marvel at what she has achieved since leaving Ga-Masehlong, where many live without electricity or indoor plumbing.

Local entrepreneurs gave her a laptop computer and promised to help fund her education. Municipal officials say a nearby stadium will be renamed for her.

McMackin used the slur during a media briefing at the Western Athletic Conference football preview in Salt Lake City.

After the remark, he uttered it two more times while trying to explain himself. After the briefing, McMackin returned to the reporters and apologized for using the “inappropriate” word.

“What I was trying to do was be funny and it wasn’t funny,” he said, according to a recording of the conversation posted on the Idaho Statesman’s Web site. “It’s not funny. Even more, it isn’t funny to me. I was trying to make a joke and it was a bad choice of words. And I really, really feel bad about it. … It was really stupid.”

The school followed up with a formal statement by McMackin.

“I sincerely apologize for the inappropriate words that I used,” he said in the statement. “My comments were out of character and I have no prejudices against anyone. I’m really upset with myself and I’m truly sorry for my remarks.”

WAC commissioner Karl Benson said McMackin’s offensive comments brought negative publicity to the conference, “at an event where the purpose was to promote the WAC in a positive manner.”

“While his comments clearly violate the WAC Code of Conduct, I will wait until the University of Hawaii determines its course of action before determining what sanctions the WAC may impose,” Benson wrote in an e-mail.

The second-year Warriors coach said he has nothing but respect for the Fighting Irish, who routed the Warriors 49-21 for their first postseason victory in 15 years. McMackin called it the worst loss in his 40 years of coaching.

Hawaii athletic director Jim Donovan, who called Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick to apologize on behalf of the university, said he will meet with McMackin on Friday.

“I’ve conveyed my disappointment to him and he has expressed deep regret for showing such poor judgment,” Donovan said. “Aside from today’s inexcusable statement, coach McMackin has been a steadfast ambassador for the university and the state of Hawaii.”

School chancellor Virginia Hinshaw said she also expressed her disappointment to the coach.

“Hurtful language like this has no place in our community, and particularly not among leaders of our … campus,” said Hinshaw, adding “further steps that will be taken to reaffirm his and our commitment to fair and equal treatment of all.”

Before joining the Warriors, McMackin spent three years with the San Francisco 49ers as associate head coach and linebackers coach under Dennis Erickson from 2003-05. He has also served as defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks and several college programs including Texas Tech, Miami, Navy, Utah and Idaho.

The news of the comments spread fast in the islands where McMackin is widely known as a warm and caring leader who often reaches out to the community.

“I’m repulsed,” said Carolyn Golojuch, a UH alumnus and president of the Oahu chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays.

She said there’s a larger issue at hand with the “atmosphere of fear” in football.

“This goes on all the time. This is not an isolated incident. Football coaches, not just ours, continue to be abusive,” Golojuch said. “Why do professional football players come out of the closet after they retire? Because of fear.”

This is not the first time a Hawaii athletic figure issued an apology for using insensitive language.

Former athletic director Hugh Yoshida said in 2000 that the reason the university switched from its longtime Rainbow logo was in part due to its connection as a symbol for gays and lesbians.

“That logo really put a stigma on our program at times in regards to it’s part of the gay community, their flags and so forth,” Yoshida said then, a day after the current Polynesian-style “H” logo was unveiled.

Yoshida quickly apologized for his comments.

Says Outsports, “Danish police arrested a 31-year-old man caught after tossing the third bomb and charged him with a hate crime, according to Danish media. The suspect  was carrying a backpack containing another half-dozen or so bombs . . . . The devices that exploded on the track were described as being powerful, about 9 inches in length, with a blue plastic covering and a fuse that was burning after it landed.”

Runner Dean Koga was brought to a hospital to have shrapnal removed from his hand. He resumed competing the next day.

During opening night ceremonies, three men from England, Sweden and Norway were attacked and later released from the hospital with minor injuries. Police arrested two men, both with criminal records, who were believed to be inebriated, the Advocate reports.