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.

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