For the flamboyantly fabulous print edition of Washington City Paper, I wrote this week about the 2013 Gay Softball World Series just being awarded to our city.

I was impressed, in a “We’ve-Come-a-Long-Way-Baby!” sort of way, by the mundanity of the announcement, that the awarding was a business matter and not a gay business matter. The Series could be worth as much as $10 million to the local economy when it gets here, so it makes sense that the primary color of the rainbow flag in all this was green. Guess we are entering an era where the Marines go looking for a few good men and women at a gay center in Tulsa, after all.

But just as D.C. was getting awarded the series, Christopher Stoll, a locally based senior staff attorney for the Center for Lesbian Rights, was getting ready for a federal trial involving gays and softball and discriminatory practices.

He’s representing three players who were ruled ineligible to play in the gay softball World Series because they were ruled not gay enough.

“The treatment these guys received is unbelievable,” says Stoll.

The case came out of the 2008 World Series in Seattle. The San Francisco team crushed an Atlanta squad in the semifinals to reach the championship game. But, according to Stoll, somebody from Atlanta — “Either a team member or the commissioner of the Atlanta league,” he says — filed a protest with Series organizers after the loss claiming that the San Francisco squad had too many straight players.

Men’s teams are allowed two non-gay players under the rules of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, the sanctioning body for the series. In the NAGAAA rule book, “gay” is defined as “A predominant sexual interest in a member of the same gender.”

Last time the Gay Softball World Series was held in our area, in 2003, that rule was on the books, but basically unenforced.

“There’s not going to be any police force that will make you prove your sexual orientation,” Bruce Sprague, an official with the host league, the D.C.-based Chesapeake and Potomac Softball, told me before the 2003 Series. “That’s an exciting thought, but it doesn’t work that way.”

Well, it didn’t work that way in gay softball in 2003, and it doesn’t work that way in the military anymore, but apparently it does work that way in gay softball these days. At least, it did in 2008. That’s when the championship game of the Seattle tourney was interrupted when the protest was lodged, and afterwards five San Francisco players were hauled before a panel.

“Two players said they were bisexual, another one said he was gay, and two refused to answer any questions,” says Stoll, who is representing the queried players.The two players who claimed bisexuality were ruled non-gay by tournament officials.

The player who said he was gay’s word was accepted.

And the quiet men?

“One player who refused to answer was ruled to be straight, one was ruled to be gay,” says Stoll.

Why the difference? “We have no explanation for that,” Stoll says. “One person is a man of color, the other person is white. The man of color was ruled to be straight. Race is the only difference that we can see.”

The ruling of three non-gays on the roster put the San Francisco squad one non-gay player over the NAGAAA limit, and the team was forced to forfeit all games and its second-place World Series finish. The three players ruled non-gay sued, alleging illegal discrimination, and the case will go to trial next month in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

All three plaintiffs, including one of the quiet men, now affirm to being bisexual.

NAGAAA officials do not deny that bisexuality wasn’t good enough, but in an open letter after the lawsuit was filed officials for the group said “there has been no wrong-doing, and the case is unfounded.”

Stoll says he hopes the suit forces NAGAAA to end its exclusionary rules.

Asked if thought a rule change to allow more non-gays to participate would water down or mean the end of the Gay World Series, Stoll said: “There are many, many gay sports organizations out there, and this is one of only a handful that still have this exclusionary rule. The Gay Games, by far the largest gay sporting event, has no rule against people based on sexual orientation. Gay basketball doesn’t have a rule like this. Gay rugby, gay wrestling don’t have a rule like this. Any number of sports leagues have found that you don’t need to exclude people, and, in fact, that it’s counterprouductive to do that. In this day and age?”

CORRECTION: Because of a reporting error, this post originally quoted attorney Chris Stoll saying that three of the players said at the hearing that they were bisexual, one said he was gay, and one didn’t answer. In fact, Stoll says, only two players, not three, claimed bisexuality at the hearing, and that two other players, not one, didn’t respond to the questions. The post now reflects that.