LGBTI history of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
Alongside the Olympics, international multi-sport events have also been organized specifically for LGBT+ athletes, including the EuroGames, Gay Games and World OutGames.
[6] Pederasty in sports was elegised by Theognis of Megara in writing "Happy is the lover who, after spending time in the gymnasium, goes home to sleep all day long with a beautiful, young man.
[6] Some Ancient Olympians noted for stigmatised adult relationships include the general and statesman Alcibiades, a successful Olympic chariot racer (taking first, second and fourth in 416 BC)[12] who had a much-studied relationship with Socrates,[13][14][15][16]: 217 also notoriously having many mistresses;[17]: 185 and stadion run winner Diocles of Corinth, who moved to Thebes to live with Philolaus of Corinth (of the Bacchiadae) and would be buried with him.
[24] French academic and gay rights activist Louis-Georges Tin noted in 2008 that "from its origin, the Olympic movement produced homophobic residue",[24] citing an essay written by modern Olympic Games founder Pierre de Coubertin from the time, in which Coubertin wrote that sport was the way to restore a man's correct "virile sensibility".
[30][32] Peltzer was able to live openly within the Weimar Republic as, despite homosexuality technically being illegal,[32] it flourished in culture and society of the interwar period, particularly in Berlin.
His artwork is known as both homoerotic and Nazi state propaganda, deliberately evoking ancient Greek aesthetics to promote the supposed Aryan physical supremacy; it reflects the homosocial masculine nature of the Nazi vision of utopia, which, paired with the classical sculptural nudity of antiquity, appeared like "a steamy wonderland in which the male body is always on view.
[42] Violette Morris, a French athlete of many sports who had long been openly lesbian, was another guest of Hitler's at the 1936 Games; she had been banned by her country from competing in 1928 because of her sexuality, and would later become a Nazi collaborator in occupied France.
The famed dancers and choreographers Harald Kreutzberg,[45] gay and androgynous,[46] and Mary Wigman, probably bisexual,[47] were the main architects of the showcase, which was run as a demonstration event.
It was rudimentary, did not result in exclusions, and may have been biased; Helen Stephens said that, after she and Stella Walsh were both accused of being men, Hitler grabbed at her to confirm she was biologically female.
[37] The 1976 Summer Olympics held in Canada saw a programme called "ville propre", with police raiding gay bars and other known homosexual hang-outs, enforcing conservatism.
Reportedly, being able to see "gay athletes in a highly organised event similar to the Olympic Games" caused attitudes to change in sport.
[55][56][57][58][59][60] Mitcham gained media coverage in Australia as reporters thought he was the first Australian to compete in the Olympics as an openly gay person at the time.
[61][62] Other notable gay Australian Olympians include Ji Wallace, who competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics[55][58] and won a silver medal in the inaugural trampoline event; however, he came out after the Games.
[64] Ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympics, the organising committee had included diversity and acceptance in its bid, and approached LGBT+ athletes to encourage participation.
Particularly in anticipation of the Russia-hosted Sochi 2014 Games, there has been defiance, with athletes and representatives from nations with LGBT+ protections openly protesting Russia's laws, and using rhetoric to promote their pro-LGBT+ stance.
The ban was upheld by Krasnodar Krai Judge Svetlana Mordovina on the basis of the Pride House inciting "propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation which can undermine the security of the Russian society and the state, provoke social-religious hatred, which is the feature of the extremist character of the activity".
Other cities across North America, Western Europe, New Zealand, and Brazil, also expressed interest in hosting Pride Houses during the Sochi Olympics.
[108] Short of 2% of all athletes at Tokyo 2020 were openly LGBT+, which was also deemed lower than the statistics in the world at large, with the deficiency similarly attributed to homophobic sporting culture.
[109] One suggestion in a Sportscotland review was that athletes are more likely to come out if they participate in a sport that is stereotypically queer, giving examples of men's figure skating and women's football.
[a] Outsports reported that of the 104 openly gay and lesbian participants in the Summer Olympics up to and including 2012 (and publicly out by 2014), 53% had won a medal.
[114] Mark Tewksbury and Greg Louganis, who were among the best in their sports, remarked that feeling personally accepted enough to share their sexuality may have been the psychological burden relieved to allow them to improve.
[119] In the years before the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the nation began somewhat re-criminalising gay sexual activities (officially decriminalised, a law against prostitution was instead applied) and, in February 1975, began enforcing this in Quebec and Ontario, and also actively seeking out people in Montreal suspected of homosexuality to arrest, generally for immorality or as supposed security threats, in a "clean city" ("ville propre") campaign.
Sport and gender activist Helen Lenskyj wrote that the move "suggested a kind of puritanical embarrassment at the prospect that Olympic visitors might actually see gay men and lesbians on the streets"; the Montreal Organising Committee worked with the local politicians, with their official stance being that "all non-conforming elements of which homosexuals are included, must be confined and made hidden".
Rather than intimidate the queer population out of the city as hoped, it instead resulted in new anti-repression activist groups being founded and the largest Canadian gay rights protests ever at the time being held.
[124] Russia's stance on LGBT rights were a major concern during the lead-up to these Games; in 2012, an attempt to obtain a Pride House was denied, and, in June 2013, Russia became the subject of international criticism after it passed a federal "gay propaganda law", which made it a criminal offence to distribute materials classified as "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships" among minors.
[125][126][127] Russia attempted to quell concerns about the propaganda law by allowing designated protest zones during the Games; media found this unsatisfactory.
[67] He said the IOC should pressure countries to repeal anti-gay laws the same way it once excluded South Africa for its apartheid system of racial segregation, and "more recently, succeeded in getting all competing nations to include female athletes on their teams in London [2012]".
[76][77][129] In the run-up to the Games, LGBT+ activists in Japan had hoped the attention of the world would encourage positive change; an anti-discrimination bill was debated, but did not pass, in the National Diet.
[129] While Japan had a political agenda through the 2010s, specifically looking ahead to the Games, to "[encourage] the positive reinterpretation of sexual minorities as important new consumers and a tourist niche", the attempts have been described as based in stereotypes and not substantive.
The IOC re-confirmed the use of sex verification in several meetings in the 1980s and 1990s, each time confirming its use for preventing "male imposters", and not aiming to exclude intersex women.
