Oakland Athletics Pride Night 2015

My A's family

UPDATE ON 3/30/15: 

Thank you all for supporting this effort. Since posting this, the response has been (unsurprisingly) overwhelmingly positive. Many have offered to donate their tickets for this effort, and others have offered to donate money to buy tickets. My boyfriend, Oakland A’s pitcher Sean Doolittle, has agreed to match any tickets I purchase. And we also started a GoFundMe account to collect donations to fill the stands at this game. You can donate here. Sean and I will match donations up to $3000. We will use the donations to buy tickets to the 6/17 Pride Night game and donate them to Our Space LGBTQI Community Center for teens and young adults. Thank you in advance for your generosity! 

As some of you know, the Oakland Athletics will be hosting their first LGBT Pride Night on June 17.  Hopefully this will be the first of many such A’s events. You can purchase tickets here.

Many people don’t know this about me, but I have two moms. My biological mom Kathy and her partner Elise (who grew up in the Bay Area) are both die-hard A’s fans as well as super gay. Like, they’re so gay for each other that they’ve fostered a long-term loving relationship likely no different from any heterosexual loving relationships you’ve seen or been a part of.

My moms are transplant San Diegans living amongst all of the San Diego Padres fans. The team the Athletics will play (and beat) on Pride Night? The San Diego Padres. This night was made for them. In fact I’m starting to suspect that the Athletics focus-grouped this event idea with just my two moms and nobody else.

It couldn’t be any more perfectly tailored to my moms than if the team announced that NPR’s Terry Gross will also be throwing out the first pitch and there will be a free notepad giveaway on which my moms can write down all of the reasons I should have majored in something more practical in college.

Terry Gross

However, as soon as the Athletics announced the LGBT Pride Night event on social media, I was saddened to read some of the replies about their decision to have a night of inclusion for the LGBT community.

Many season ticket holders (certainly not all of them) indicated a desire to sell their tickets to that game so that they wouldn’t have to attend. So that gave me an idea. Here goes:

Dear season ticket holders who wish to sell their tickets for LGBT Pride Night,

Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs and as long as nobody is getting hurt, I’m happy. I also can’t stop you from selling your tickets. I won’t tell you that you are wrong or that you are not allowed to think or act that way.

We live in a free country, after all. You are free to think and say and do whatever you’d like. In fact just this morning I used my freedom to eat yogurt with a steak knife because I ran out of clean spoons (because SOMEone forgot to turn on the dishwasher last night). Who was going to stop me? That’s right. Nobody. Nice try bin Laden.

I ended up cutting the corner of my mouth on the knife, and it wasn’t one of my brightest decisions. But I may have just invented a DIY smile enhancement. And I will sue you if you steal my idea. #America

I digress. So, A’s fans; if attending a baseball game on LGBT Pride Night makes you at all uncomfortable, it is probably a good idea to sell your tickets. And I have the perfect buyer. ME!

If you’d like to sell your tickets to June 17th’s LGBT Pride Night game, I will buy them from you at face value. As many as I can. No judgments. No questions asked.

From there, I will donate any tickets I purchase to the Bay Area Youth Center’s Our Space community for LGBTQ youth.

That way you don’t have to feel uncomfortable, and the seats don’t go to waste. It’s win-win.

Please tweet at me (@EireannDolan) if you’d like to sell me your tickets. I’ll purchase as many unwanted tickets as I can out of my own pocket. I also encourage other A’s fans to do the same. Let’s fill the stands that night!

Love,

Eireann and my hella gay moms

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153 thoughts on “Oakland Athletics Pride Night 2015”

  1. Jenny Cooper says:

    You are a beautiful person inside & out. This world & the A’s are better because of you. Tell your two REALLY GAY Moms and your dad that they have done a fantastic job on raising you!!! You’re not getting my Season Tickets, I will be there!!!

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  4. Candi Fuller says:

    What a great idea to fill the o.co full of people who are happy and proud to be at the A’s first Pride Night. My family and friends are planning to make a big outing of it…see you all there!

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  6. Vicky Lawton says:

    Eireann, once again I am in awe of your kind and powerful soul. You make me proud to be an American, proud to be an A’s fan and proud that you get what life and love is about. Thank you for putting up with Sean for the sake of our A’s (jk) and thanks to your moms for raising such an amazing woman.

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  7. I appreciate what you’re doing and the way you’re doing it. What’s so beautiful is that your post has ZERO hostility in it. Change that endures is made with kindness, generosity, and humor. Thanks for using your voice and doo-ing your part for good.

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  11. AmberMarie says:

    You are amazing and I think it’s fantastic the A’s are doing a LGBT Pride Game. Huge A’s fan always… Hope I can make the game!!

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    • Donna, happily having GLBT nights and stuff will only be necessary for another 5-10 years probably — once straight people accept gay people, that makes it a non-issue and at that moment there won’t be any more LGBT nights or organizations etc. because it won’t be necessary. But at the moment? Gay people are still under attack, and they and their straight friends and allies do fun, unifying things to support each other. They’re going to win, of course, in the long run, but specialized groups create themselves when they’re discriminated against for what makes them special — in this case the minority sexual orientation, homosexuality. If you don’t like LGBT groups, Donna, work to end hatred of people just because they’re LGBT and you’ll make those groups disappear.

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      • Diane Bunyard says:

        Chandler I don’t think the issue is accepting gay people – it is accepting the lifestyle. Just because there has never been a “Pride Night” has never stopped gays from going to a game, there are gay people at every single game. When you have these type of events people feel they’re being forced to accept something they may not agree with or want to be apart of. I have gay people in my family but we don’t make a distinction about it. They are just normal people like everyone else & don’t feel they have to have special treatment to be accepted. Making people bad because they don’t want to be apart of “Pride Night” is just as wrong.

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  14. Christy Egenes says:

    That is the most fantastic way to tell those people who don’t want to be at a LGBTQ game that, hey we’d rather have the seats filled with us and our supporters. I stick to the SF Giants and their games, but I would love to buy a chink of tickets for myself and a few friends to show our support for this event. I would be happy to buy them from you if I could – otherwise I will get them online. Let me know!!! Christy Egenes
    cegenes@gmail.com

    Liked by 1 person

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  16. Matt says:

    Thank you for standing up for the equality of EVERYONE. If I had the extra cash to go to the game I would buy tickets even though I am a Dodgers fan just to show that straight men also support LGBTQ rights.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  17. Catherine says:

    You are truly a free spirit, a throwback from the 60’s as it were. My daughter, who is hella gay, and I will be at the game. Shame on those that feel it’s necessary to sell their tickets. It’s a baseball game for God’s sake!

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    • Diane Bunyard says:

      Exactly-it’s a baseball game! What does being straight or gay have to do with it? Don’t gay people already go to the games? Don’t understand why “Pride Night” is so important. I have never seen discremenation at a ballgame. I have a gay neice and she and her partner go to the games all the time. Never a problem. From my perspective having a “Pride Night” is the reason straight people have a problem-because they feel like they’re being forced to accept something they might not agree with.

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      • Diane, a straight analytic chemist buddy of mine who heard someone say something about “the gay lifestyle” sort of rolled his eyes and commented “In chemistry the first principle is: You cannot get the right answer if you do not analyze the problem correctly.” You wrote “Chandler I don’t think the issue is accepting gay people – it is accepting the lifestyle.’ Your error of analysis is simple; There is no such thing as a “gay lifestyle.” It’s a myth. There’s no such as a “straight” lifestyle. People who are uncomfortable with gay people deny the existence of sexual orientation in the way that people uncomfortable with Genesis’ Adam and Eve not being true deny the empirical data of geology and physics. People are born with the majority (right handers) and minority (left handers) handedness and with the majority (heterosexual) and minority (homosexual) sexual orientation. (The clinical data shows around 5 or 6% of human beings are born with the minority sexual orientation.) It’s tough for people who need to believe others choose (that’s what lifestyle means: something we choose, like being vegetarian) (a lifestyle I admire by the way, wish I could do it! but I like bacon too much, for the time being at least) to be homosexual or left-handed. But that’s reality. We know it’s comforting to believe there’s a choice to be gay, Diane, some “lifestyle.” But it’s a myth. And an excuse by the way–you don’t actually accept gay people if you mis-analyze the reality of sexual orientation. You, personally, are being faced with accepting something you don’t agree with. (Although it isn’t the thing – “lifestyle” – you tell yourself you don’t agree with.) I’m sorry to say it’s your calling gay people a “lifestyle” instead of just human beings who happen to have the minority sexual orientation that make it necessary for brave, good people like Eireann to stand up for her family against stuff like that, to organize LGBT A’s night for people to feel good and safe and reassured – to have pride – when people like you reduce them to a “lifestyle.” The funny thing is that you actually create “Pride Night.” And you can end it – by ending the need for it, by honestly giving them equality in your heart and mind. What you dislike about “making people bad because they don’t” accept other people’s sexual orientation – well, I know it’s a struggle (and I say this entirely seriously, and actually sympathetically). You know, someone I know – not an American but he lives here, a good guy who thinks about morality and being good – he struggles with accepting women as true equals because it contradicts his culture. He says the same thing you do, the same thing people said about different skin color. “I’m not bad because I have different values.” When someone’s values mean they don’t accept people because of skin color or sexual orientation or gender, there’s simply a word that describes that. We all struggle with facts that force us to reexamine our beliefs. But our being good means our tackling that struggle honestly and courageously.

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  18. Joel says:

    Eireann, great idea! Our family (of four) already budgeted, and purchased all our A’s tickets for the year, but when a friend sent me this link, we changed our minds. We’ll be there in Green and Gold, and Rainbow!

    Liked by 1 person

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  19. j9tigger says:

    I just posted on a lesbian meetup in the east bay – I’m bringing as many lesbians as I can, and you know we’re riding BART to the game!

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  20. James Dowling says:

    I will change my birthday party to this game! Lifelong A’s fan, been attending games since ’86. Been supporting gay friends and family since ’78. I’ll bring my super straight family and let my baby son bask in ONE LOVE…

    Liked by 2 people

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  22. Pingback: MLB LiveScore Now! | Sean Doolittle’s girlfriend will buy your tickets to A’s Pride Night

  24. Frances Deane says:

    As I read this article I got tears in my eyes. This is what America is all about and I am proud to be an American and an Oakland Athletics fan. I would love to attend this game to show my support.

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  25. Pingback: Sean Doolittle’s girlfriend will buy your tickets to A’s Pride Night

  27. Dana says:

    I saw the SI post on FB and smiled reading what you guys are doing and then again reading about you and your moms. Great idea and good luck!

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  28. Pingback: A’s Closer, Girlfriend Buying Tickets To Fill Stands For LGBT Pride Night « CBS San Francisco

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  39. rhodey8 says:

    My family had season tickets for most my life, and continue to be die hard A’s fans and we couldn’t support you more! Way to stand up for the LGB community…and you’ve done so with such class and humor. I also love the spark that it has ignited amongst like-minded people in the Bay Area. I’m writing from the Middle East, but if I was remotely close, I’d be there to support you, my LGB friends, the A’s organization, and my favorite ball club on this night. I’m always proud to Don the green and gold…even more so today!!! Bravo, bravo, bravo!!! PS I think you should be throwing out the first pitch.

    Liked by 1 person

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  40. Thank you. Thank you for taking a stand. For using your voice. For your kindness. This is one of the few “feel-good” stories I’ve read in a while. All of us in the LBGT community thank you for being an ally, because with more kindness from people like you in the world, sports can be a bit more weaved into our social beliefs and character.

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    • Cynical Susan says:

      Gay Agenda? Really? Agenda — that means a program of things to be done, right? So … Gays are planning to … what? Make us all wear purple? make us all leave our straight partners and join new same-sex partners? make us all love Judy Garland? What IS the agenda? Is it just to be accepted without a lot of hysteria?

      I dunno — people talk about The Life Style and Choosing It — who would CHOOSE to be, potentially, thrown out of their family, bullied, insulted, discriminated against, beaten up, and maybe even killed? Doesn’t seem like much of a CHOICE to me.

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  45. Ame says:

    I cried and I clapped at my desk at work. I didn’t even care if I looked like an idiot. I love it, and you’re amazing. I love that this is going viral.

    Organized and legislated hate needs to end! Equality is not an “agenda.” Our constitution says EQUALITY FOR ALL, and ALL includes LGBT, and ALL races and ALL creeds! Denying the rights of others does not make you a better person, does not make you a better “christian”, it makes you a sanctimonious asshole!

    I hope that stadium is packed full of amazing people for that game, and that the A’s do more than one Pride game a season. I’d love to see every team do the same. I think I can add the A’s to my Cardinals cheers this year 😉

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