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"\n\tAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below\n\t\n\nThe WNBA is making history as the first professional sports league to market specifically to the LGBT community (via the Associated Press). The league is launching an LGBT-aimed website later today, a Pride game next month, national advertising campaigns, and initiatives with all 12 WNBA teams and LGBT groups throughout the season. \"For us it's a celebration of diversity and inclusion and recognition of an audience that has been with us very passionately,\" says WNBA President Laurel Richie.\n\nWhen the league started in 1997, executives assumed the same NBA audiences would get into the WNBA, but they quickly figured out that a huge number of their fans were LGBT people who were not into the NBA. \"Our league being the first to make that push and bring more attention to it is great,\" says Brittney Griner, a WNBA player and one of the first pro athletes to come out as gay. \"We'll pave the way and show it's fine and there's nothing wrong with it. More sports need to do it. It's 2014, it's about time.\"RELATED: 10 Things Not to Say to a Bisexual WomanThe 13 Best Things About Being a Lesbian13 Things Not To Say to Your Lesbian FriendWNBA Star Brittney Griner: I Told the Popular Girls I Wasn't Gay, But I Was LyingFollow Frank on Twitter.Photo credit: WNBA"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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