The Gayest Olympics Ever
With two Pride Houses and refugee counselling for gay athletes, Vancouver may be starting a new Games tradition.
By Vanessa Richmond, 9 Feb 2010, TheTyee.ca
Rendering of proposed new Qmunity Resource Centre, to be shared with Gordon Neighbourhood House,
in Vancouver’s West End.
…”Here, in Canada, it’s pretty cushy. If you’re gay, you’re treated like a real human being,” he says, while making last minute preparations for the launch. But being gay is illegal in 14 of the countries participating in the Games, and in two, homosexual acts are punishable by death.
That’s why at Vancouver’s Pride House, too, even though the focus will be on making people feel welcome and safe, creating a space to meet up with friends and even trade pins, they also want to encourage people share experiences about what conditions are like for gay people in other countries. They’ll have maps that show where it’s illegal to be gay, where it’s punishable by death, where it’s legal to be married, where it’s not.
And they’ll have refugee counsellors on hand. “If there’s an athlete, a visitor, or whatever, and they say, ‘You know what I can’t go back,’” because of facing discrimination in their home country, “we’ll have people here to walk them through the process,” says Jennifer Breakspear, the executive director of Qmunity, the hosting organization of Vancouver’s Pride House that calls itself “BC’s queer resource centre.” She says maybe no one will claim asylum at these Games, but in almost every Olympics held in a Western nation, at least one person has….
Read the full article at thetyee.ca.
