Loving The Kiss Cam Action At LA Dodgers' Pride Night

Over 8,000 fans attending the LA Dodgers Pride Night game last Friday - the most tickets ever sold by a Major League Baseball team for a single Pride Night.

The Dodgers have put much thought into making sure all LGBT Dodger fans feel embraced throughout the night, including:

• The always popular "Kiss Cam" featured several gay and lesbian couples smooching on the Jumbotron.

• The National Anthem was performed by Dot Marie Jones (of GLEE fame) along with the Gay Men's Chorus and Trans Chorus of Los Angeles.

• LGBT peeps threw out the first pitch.

• There were Pride Night t-shirts created by the Dodgers for the event.

• Pride Night was announced during the game announcements, and signage all over the stadium made clear whose night it was.

Bonus: the home team won with the Dodgers besting the Cincinnati Reds 7-2.

By the way, the Reds don't have any LGBT fan events like Pride Night, so boo on them. They lost twice that night.

Watch the Kiss Cam action below:

Dodger Stadium Kiss-Cam Couple

From MSNBC: At a recent night out at the ballpark, the crowd at the L.A. Dodgers’ stadium erupted in cheers after a gay couple were featured on the "Kiss Cam."

That couple, Steve and Rick Simone-Friedland, join Lawrence O'Donnell to share the story.

The couple shares that they committed to each other in 1999, and later married in 2013.

Apparently the camerawoman at the Los Angeles Dodgers game asked if they would appear on the Kiss Cam; Rick agreed, but Steven expressed some trepidation about the crowd's possible reaction.

And then came the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the crowd.

Folks may recall that in 2000 a lesbian couple was ejected from the stadium for a simple kiss.

Progress, kids. Progress.

Crowds Cheer Gay Couple On LA Dodgers "Kiss-Cam"

This is pretty amazing. Wow how times have changed.

From Deadspin:

Back in 2000, two women were kicked out of Dodger Stadium for kissing.

The team and the world have changed since then.

Between innings of Saturday’s game, the stadium’s Kiss Cam team found two men, not as a joke, but a couple. It’s cool that this wasn’t the still-prevalent homophobic gag of forcing two platonic male friends to awkwardly recoil at the thought of kissing another dude.

It’s also cool that the reaction from the crowd was a genuine cheer. Reader Steven, who was in the ballpark, says he was “proud of the loud, enthusiastic response from the crowd. Not one person around me groaned or made derogatory remarks, and seemed genuinely pleased with the moment.”

The Dodgers have held LGBT nights in recent years, and while it’s great to publicly announce that everyone’s welcome, there’s nothing quite like being normalized by dorky in-stadium entertainment to make everyone feel included.