Baltimore Raven Brendon Ayanbadejo sat down with USA Today after a panel at EA's LGBT Full Spectrum event in New York City on Tuesday and talked about his participation in the fight for LGBT equality.
Said Ayanbadejo:
"[LGBT equality] is the hardest fight I've ever had to face in my life and I've seen my fair share of adversity growing up in the projects, growing up on welfare, a lot of gang violence. Basically having nothing then coming full circle to where I am today. I've seen a lot of adversity but this is definitely the hardest fight because a lot of people don't want to change."
He was also asked about the amicus brief he is submitting in the Prop 8 case:
Along with several professors, you and Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe recently filed a brief with the Supreme Court urging them to reject California's ban on same-sex marriage. Why did you take that step?
Our thinking in this amicus brief is that I'm known to support LGBT rights and Chris Kluwe just as well, so we teamed up with a couple professors and we had an attorney write the brief. We presented it to the SCOTUS. I think it went pretty well. I had no idea how big of an impact it was going to be.
Now we're trying to get more high-profile people to sign on to our brief, which has to be submitted by March 24. We have Dominique Foxworth, the NFLPA president, UFC fighter Rashad Evans and Patrick Nero, the athletic director at George Washington University, where I'm currently getting my MBA.
Read the full interview here.
