One of the most dramatic political statements made during my lifetime took place at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. It was an unexpected, jaw-dropping moment of dignity and grace, reviled at the time and lauded in retrospect. As a 13-year-old watching on television, I’ll never forget it.
American sprinter Tommie Smith won the 200 meter dash in world record time. Australia’s Peter Norman finished second, and Smith’s American teammate, John Carlos, placed third. The Americans were tall, handsome, goateed and proudly black.
After the race, the three athletes approached the podium to receive their medals. Smith and Carlos were shoeless, wearing only black socks to signify black poverty.
More significantly, the Americans each wore a single black glove. And when The Star Spangled Banner began they raised their gloved fists toward the flag and bowed their heads. Smith and Carlos remained in the recognizable Black Power salute throughout the anthem, and when it was over boos echoed throughout the stadium. Their silent protest just six months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. defined the 1968 games and became headline news worldwide.
I hope something similarly courageous occurs next February at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. This time the message won’t be Black Power, but LGBT Equality.
It could happen. Russia is proudly homophobic and trending retrograde. Although homosexual acts by men were decriminalized in 1993, a 2013 survey found that 74 percent of Russians believe homosexuality should not be tolerated up from 60 percent in 2002. Russia’s government recently enacted a federal bill banning propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations around minors. Offenders can be jailed for up to two weeks. Nine in 10 Russians support the ban.
Foreign tourists have reportedly been arrested for discussing gay rights. And gay-bashing is epidemic, fueled by anti-gay pronouncements from government officials like Dimitri Kisilev, Deputy General Director of Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting.
I think that just imposing fines on gays for homosexual propaganda among teenagers is not enough, he said to applause before a live television audience. They should be banned from donating blood and sperm, and in the case of an automobile accident their hearts should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life.
Any wonder a young Volgograd man was recently beaten to death after being sodomized by beer bottles?
The spotlight will be on Russia for two weeks next February, and this homophobic pig apparently has no intention of dressing up; not for thousands of athletes from 38 nations, nor even the swarm of international media. More than one Russian government official has clarified that the propaganda ban will be enforced in Sochi.
Most disheartening, the International Olympic Committee appears to be lining up with their winter hosts and against free expression. When Gay Star News asked the IOC about athletes wearing rainbow pins or holding hands during opening or closing ceremonies, an official replied, The IOC has a clear rule. No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic venues.
Remarkably, prominent members of America’s religious right have aligned themselves with the Russians. In these post-DOMA days in which equality is being celebrated throughout much of the nation and world, the optics couldn’t be more striking.
Russia is not being homophobic, it’s being homo-realistic, said the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer. The Russian government is trying to establish public policy to contribute to public health, as this lifestyle is as risky as drug abuse. Fischer also suggested that people from the West might begin emigrating to Russia for their model pro-family society. Republicans, I ask you: Whose side of this issue are you on? Vladimir Putin’s?
At present, the IOC seems indifferent to the impact Russia’s restrictive laws will have on gay athletes.
I don’t think you’ll find a single athlete who’d disagree with the notion that you perform better when you don’t have to hide who you are, observed New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup, who is openly gay.
Talk of a boycott has been discouraged by President Obama. But he has spoken out strongly and used the issue to tweak Russian President Putin, with whom he is feuding.
Nobody is more offended than me by some of the anti-gay and lesbian legislation that you’ve been seeing in Russia, Obama said last week on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
My hope is that the U.S. Winter Olympic Team, under cover of a President that will take delight in supporting them, will make a statement. It’s likely too late to change uniforms, but not to add a jaunty rainbow scarf worn by all 300-or-so athletes.
And my fantasy is that supportive athletes in that gayest of events figure skating will adopt a common musical them: gay anthems. Imagine sequined skaters, gay and straight, performing one-after-the-other to Sister Sledge’s We Are Family, The Village People’s YMCA, k.d. lang’s Constant Craving, Diana Rossm’s Coming Out, The Weathergirls It’s Raining Men, ABBA’s Dancing Queen, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, and Judy Garland’s Over the Rainbow.
The highlight would be flamboyantly gay skater Johnny Weir who is trying out but has yet to make the team. Weir married his half-Russian boyfriend in 2011, and recently said he’s willing to be arrested in Sochi. Imagine him posed at center ice, waiting for the opening notes to the greatest gay anthem of them all: I Am Who I Am.
That’s an Olympic protest for the 21st Century.
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