Two-time Super Bowl Champion and New Orleans Saints Defensive Tackle Khalen Saunders (#50) launches an ‘LGBTQ-friendly” youth football camp.
The event is in partnership with GLAAD and the NFL Pride Football clinic. Saunders, 28, says he’s on a mission to make football more welcoming and “inclusive” with his camp this summer. He made the announcement on stage during the 2025 GLAAD Media Awards on Thursday (March 27).
He then spoke about the initiative again during an appearance on NFL Network’s ‘Good Morning Football,’ where he boasted, “Football is for all.”
Khalen Saunders — whose brother Kameron Saunders is a back-up dancer for Taylor Swift — said:
“I feel like being an ally is more than just saying, ‘I support.’ It’s also showing up. Obviously, being in the NFL, it’s very male-dominant and heterosexual-dominant. It’s not really—it feels as if—there’s not really a space for the LGBTQ community. But, just working with organizations, like the GLAAD Media Awards, and also the NFL Pride Football clinic that they had during Super Bowl week, I was actually able to go out there and talk to some of the people that were participating in it.
[There] were great conversations. These were people who feel like they have to be hidden, although they love the sport. They might love the NFL and football in general as a sport, but they shy away from it just because of orientations, and all these other outside things.”
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Khalen Saunders continued to speak on his ‘LGBTQ-friendly” youth football camp:
“That’s kind of why—that’s kind of my goal and why I started up an organization. My foundation, Original Element Foundation. That’s kind of my pillars: inclusivity and bringing everybody together through the power of football. One of my events that I hold every year with that organization is my football combine.
I’m going to be having one of the first LGBTQ-friendly football combine/camp—a day of play in general—just to get kids out and active. That’s my goal. It’s just to continue to spread positive energy around that. Football is for everybody. Football is for all. I think that we’re getting closer to that in general, as a society. But, I’m just trying to do my part.”
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