Rough Notes: For! The! Gays!
An evolution of what this queer rallying cry really means, beyond its viral moment in the WNBA.
Turns out, I haven’t stopped thinking about these three words: for the gays! Not just the fact of them, but how this little phrase has multiplied, how it’s still echoing. Here’s the story:
The call heard ’round the (queer) world took place out of Ballhalla, San Francisco, California in late June. This was the rallying cry of Valkyries small forward (and excellent ball handler because yes you can do both), Gabby Williams, who screamed FOR THE GAYS! after defeating the Atlanta Dream at approximately 8:51 PDT on June 26, 2026. She sounded like a shaken can peeled open, bobbing her finger toward the camera:
Just two days later, on June 28, the Valkyries and their fans returned to Chase Center for another game (yes, there were two Valks home games over SF Pride Weekend, forcing Bay Area lesbians to multi-task even more than usual.) This time, you could spot homemade signs across the arena, scrawled with the same words. Gabby’s shout had become a call-and-response:
The chorus didn’t end there. In the 4th quarter of the game, a chant broke out. At first, I couldn’t quite hear what they saying, but then the words rippled across Ballhalla and into my ears. This was the sound of thousands of people, together in staccato declaration: FOR! THE! GAYS!
It reminded me of a prayer. And I wondered if I’d hallucinated this: was this the new peak of WNBA queerness? And yet, we were still ascending.
At the very next Valkyries practice - July by now, no longer even Pride month, reporters asked head coach Natalie Nakase what she made of the whole thing, to which she responded with classic candor:
“I was like, ‘perfect.’ I’m like,‘let’s just have every night be Pride night then,’” said the most perfect coach in the WNBA.
Which brings us to the conclusion of this FOR THE GAYS lore — for now: in the WNBA, it’s Pride every night. Them’s the facts.
In a vacuum, this is all wonderful, and kinda silly. But as my friend/editor Wren recently reminded me, it’s most important in comparison (thank you, editors!) Because inhabiting this kind of full-throated Pride isn’t the reality everywhere. Not every night, or perhaps any night.
Yes, I am going to talk about men’s sports now.
Ok, I tried to ignore it at first. But thinking about men’s sports here is actually worth it. Because the beautiful evolution of for the gays! is strikingly different from the news cycle of another pro sport - one that plays right here, just a 20ish minute walk away in San Francisco: Major League Baseball.
Here’s the deal, if you don’t already know it (I, um, didn’t): the San Francisco Giants’ “Pride Night saga” took place on June 12 — during which several players touted anti-gay bible verses scrawled into their baseball caps (yes, in the year 2026.) But that was just the beginning.
In the aftermath, something arguably worse took place: the franchise grumpily resisted acknowledging the harm caused by this bigotry… giving the vibe of an institution both propping up homophobic bigotry while whining that their backs hurt doing it. The impact of this, ultimately, is a refusal to recognize the Giants’ gay fans at all (yes, in San Francisco, in the year 2026!) It is heartbreaking.
these visuals are thanks to sf gate, which did some amazing men’s sports reporting! That’s all I could think about in this video clip, wherein Buster Posey — President of Baseball Operations at the Giants and a guy whose name still reeks of my childhood (so you know he’s gotta be synonymous-with-the-franchise-forever) — refuses to answer reporters questions about what happened:
There’s nothing like an institution’s silence to seal the lid of homophobia even tighter: “Baseball questions only.” Which is just so maddening for queer people who find themselves… existing? Living and breathing? Caring and loving and working to make a living so we can spend our hard-earned cash on… a sport that pretends not to see us at all?
And this reminds me of certain aspects of the early WNBA, when one anxiety permeated everything: God forbid anyone know that women’s basketball was already so gay. In 1997, when the WNBA first began, it embodied that institutional balk of, “hey, nothing to see here, guys” - aka “let’s keep to baseball questions only.”
Back to the WNBA, phew.
You likely know about the WNBA’s early tyranny of compulsive heterosexuality. (And if you don’t, you can read about the guerrilla investigators of this phenomenon & its undoing here.) While queer fans comprised of the bulk of every crowd (yes, often in a butch way), it would take the league until 2014 to finally host a WNBA-wide Gay Pride Night.
But long before then, change did come… just on a more local level. And to see the full picture of that history, you have to look west-ward. To the West Coast (Best Coast.) That’s where the first franchise in the league, the Seattle Storm, officially hosted a Gay Pride Night Celebration in 2000.
There were very few write-ups in 2000 about this - in fact, the above graphic comes from 2001 - but I did find one small clipping that said Seattle’s 2000 Pride celebration “created a stir,” and was also one of the Storm’s “more successful promotions.” Hell yeah!
But I think for many in a city like Seattle, the Pride celebration probably wasn’t all that stirring really; the franchise was seen as welcoming to queer fans, and had already been running ads in the local gay and lesbian newspaper:
And they weren’t alone in doing this. To get the full picture of gay Y2K change-makers in the WNBA, you have to look to Northern California… not in the Bay Area, but in Sacramento. That was the capital of WNBA lesbians around here between 1997-2008 — thanks to one of the league’s inaugural teams, the Sacramento Monarchs.
… But as it turns out, this bit is just a teaser. Because the particular queer history of how the Sacramento Monarchs (RIP) first got their Gay Pride Night is one I’ve been uncovering for an audio documentary/podcast episode, airing on the next season of KALW’s Bounce podcast, coming out this summer! And when it’s out (yes, a pun), you’ll be the first to know.
For now, let’s revel in the power of Pride Every Night in the WNBA. Let’s keep chanting For! The! Gays! and talking to WNBA coaches and administrators and advocates about what the queer community actually wants, like making sure trans people are truly included!!! And let’s make this cry heard ‘round even louder… especially in the year 2026, and especially to break the silence of professional men’s sports (if you want, you also don’t need to go over there, don’t worry.) And actually, if you’d like a shirt, my friend Donka is organizing group orders right here <3
This is a great piece! I just have to mention that Cheryl Reeve said "we should have done it for the gays" in a post game presser a day or two before Gabby said it. Natasha Cloud said it at some point as well. I guess this is a Valkyries blog so that's okay to focus on one team but it's a leaguewide phenomenon :)
Great piece. Question is the L word verboten?