Podcast: Anti-LGBTQ Adoption Discrimination In Kansas & Oklahoma; Adam Rippon Slays On DWTS; 2018 Tony Award Nominations; Pride Nights At Major League Baseball

In this week's LGBTQ headlines:

• Oklahoma and Kansas state legislatures pass anti-LGBTQ adoption laws

• A new survey of over 40,000 Americans shows acceptance for same-sex marriage has hit 61%

• Ireland moves to ban so-called "conversion therapy"

• The 'boys of summer' are back and most Major League Baseball teams have scheduled special LGBT Pride Nights (head over to Outsports.com for a complete list of MLB Pride Nights)

• Drag queen Ada Vox exits American Idol with her head held high

• Tony Kushner’s Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes became the most Tony-nominated play in history as the 2018 Tony Award nominations were announced

• Adam Rippon came to slay on the premiere of the all-athletes season of Dancing with the Stars

All that and more on this episode of The Randy Report

Podcast: White House Preps Trans Military Phase Out; Will & Grace Already Renewed For 2nd Season; Gay Short Film Charms Millions

In this week’s podcast:

• The White House has approved guidance for booting transgender service members out of the U.S. military

• NBC not only adds four more episodes to the Will & Grace reboot, but has already renewed the iconic sitcom for a second season

• Animated queer short film In A Heartbeat charms millions in only four minutes

• The acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name gets first official trailer

• Matt Joyce of the Oakland A's suspended for shouting anti-gay slur at fan

All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report.

Giants Pitcher Jeremy Affeldt: "Jesus Walks With The Gay Community"

Jeremy Affeldt, a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, recently took to his blog to share why he thinks Christians have gotten a bad rap these days and it has to do with their feelings towards gay people.

In a post on his blog, Affeldt asks his fellow Christians to be more loving of gays:

Why do people who aren't Christians hate us? They look at us and say, "You're just a bunch of Bible thumpers who are homophobic and you don't love anybody."

We've brought that on ourselves. I don't think we're showing the love of Jesus. Gay people are asking for equal rights under the law, and we've got Christians saying "God hates you." I get so angry because that's not true! God loves you! Jesus walks with the gay community! I think Jesus says, "I love you just as I love someone who is not gay. I love you as a human being. I just love you."

I had homophobia. I know what that's like. But I was wrong to fear like that. God reached deep within my heart and changed me. Now I have gay friends and colleagues. There is no difference between us. Gay people are human beings, and I'm going to love on them just as God told me to love all human beings. God told us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Maybe if more of us did that, Christians wouldn't be so hated everywhere we go.

There's a reason why Affeldt is a three-time world champion. Clarity of mind and spirit will do that to you.

(h/t Outsports)

First Active Major League Baseball Umpire Comes Out

Outsports shares one of the best, yet surprisingly casual coming out stories ever.

Major League Baseball umpire Dale Scott - veteran of three World Series, three All-Star games and six league championship series - allowed himself to be profiled in a Referee Magazine interview this past October. And while he's always been out in his private life, he's never made an issue of being gay at work. However, when the profile was being written about him he thought it would off-key to not include his husband Mike, with whom he's been with for 28 years, in some small way.

"My thought process was," Scott told Outsports in his first interview on the subject, "is that there's a story about my career and how I got started in umpiring and they're talking to people I have known since junior high and it didn't seem right to have a whole story and pictures without a picture of Mike and I, someone who's been with me through this entire process. We met the October after my first year in the big leagues.

"Obviously, when I sent that picture to Jeff, I knew exactly what it meant. In a small way, this was opening that door in a publication that wasn't going to be circulated nationwide. It could be picked up, but it's not Time magazine. I made that decision to go ahead and do it because I felt it was the right thing to do.

Regarding his work with MLB, Scott says, "I am extremely grateful that Major League Baseball has always judged me on my work and nothing else."