Roller Derby, what is the big deal?

It has been interesting to watch the Roller Derby Reverend story progress.  Along the way there have been a number of comments left on sites along the lines of "what is the big deal" about being a roller girl. Sometimes talking about how other ministers participate in other semi-pro or pro sports.  Well, if you are one of those folks I would suggest checking out this article about Roller Derby Names.  The question in the article being something along the lines of "do we want our sport to be taken seriously?" and giving examples of how the sport can sometimes be not so family friendly.  I am really glad that the Derby City Roller Girls are a great family friendly league.

The story was picked up by CNN, but they post a shorter version of the story.  Also, they got rid of any suspense and imply declared in the title that a Pastor came out as a Roller Derby girl.  Last I checked the short version of the story only had a few hundred Facebook shares, and not the 10,000+ shares the original story has.  The CNN version cutting out the "moment of acceptance" which is what I think made the original story so great.

In addition to Facebook it has been shared by Feministe as the Holy Roller (a name Liv Fearless considered but rejected). It also made it to Fark.  It even sparked a theological question for the Roller Derby commissioner.

It has been great to see people asking about Unitarian Universalism, and Roller Derby, and hopefully everyone has learned a bit about both.  It has been really great to see a positive new piece be so popular.  For CNN it was in the top 100 stories in a 24 hour period, and was the top in their lifestyle category. 


Update 9/27/2011:
Another version on YouTube: Local Reverend rolls out big secret this version is the full WHAS version minus the context of the actual news cast.

Another post I will be checking on to see the commentary (but likely won't create an account) is Would your (church?) hire a Roller Derby Girl to be a Senior Minister?  The way the question is framed it isn't really what happened (she was not involved with Roller Derby while a candidate), but could be interesting.

My wife is in the news

I have a few nitpicks with the story, but overall i think they did a good job: Local reverend rolls out big secret.