Life go on for Sochi’s gay muny, spe 2014 Wter Olympics

HOW SOCHI BEME THE GAY OLYMPICS

* gay sochi *

A monstrator holds a rabow flag and the Rsian natnal flag durg a prott agast Rsia's anti-gay laws outsi the Rsian embassy Berl. (Rters/Thomas Peter)In Augt 1982, 1, 350 athlet om 12 untri gathered San Francis for the first-ever Gay Gam.

At the Mayak Cabaret, one of the few gay clubs Rsia’s Olympic cy of Sochi, a man strips to his unrwear as a drag performer stris towards him. * gay sochi *

The Stonewall rts were more than a the past; a year earlier, reports had surfaced about rare pnmonia and ncer afflictg homosexuals New York and California—the first glimmers of what would later be lled AIDS. Tom Wadll, a gay Olympian who would die of AIDS five years later, told The New York Tim that he had anized the athletic petn to “pull the gay muny together globally.

SOCHI'S GAY SCENE

It has gay bars. And Cossacks. Not necsarily the same place. * gay sochi *

”At the time, that gay muny found self vastly different circumstanc around the world.

DACHA, CHACHA AND A GAY BAR: 9 WAYS SOCHI SURPRIS

As the activist Greg Day wrote the program for the gural Gay Gam, the U.

Had “much to learn om Holland, Norway and France where there are natnal laws protectg the rights of Gay and Lbian cizens.

EXCLIVE: SOCHI'S GAYS HAD PROTECTN FROM THE MAYOR WHO CLAIMED THEY DON'T EXIST

” “Direct ntact” wh athlet om the natns, Day argued, would be enlighteng for Amerins livg a untry where ternatnal visors were often nied entry bee of their sexual s later, sports are once aga stirrg to take stock of gay rights around the world. Ultimately, the stlit Olympics history may be remembered for markg a perd which gay rights aren’t so much advancg globally as expandg certa parts of the world while regrsg or languishg 6, 000 athlet om 85 untri gather Sochi, the global gay-rights divi will be unmistakable.

“The stat of LGBT rights globally is schizophrenic, ” Jsi Stern, executive director of the New York-based Internatnal Gay and Lbian Human Rights Commissn, tells me. But gay rights only me to the fore the summer of 2013, when the Rsian ernment, which crimalized homosexualy 1993, banned the dissematn of “propaganda of nontradnal sexual relatns” around children—makg more difficult for gay activists to operate and, rights groups allege, fuelg a rise anti-gay vlence the untry. Around the same time, Print Vladimir Put signed another law prohibg gay and lbian upl foreign untri om adoptg Rsian children.

Sochi's gay scene | The Wir Image | Rters

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HOW SOCHI BEME THE GAY OLYMPICS