Overcoming discrimination isn't a game by Mary Schmich
Overcoming discrimination isn't a game by Mary Schmich
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
Published July 16, 2006
Who was the first gay person you ever met? The first openly gay person?
The first person I ever met was a college friend named David Nimmons, who would go on to become a gay activist, educator, writer and leader of workshops for gay men, including several in recent years in Chicago.
It was the early '80s. Until that breakthrough decade in this country, homosexuality was widely viewed as a shame, a sin, a disorder, a crime or, at best, a joke.
You may have known gay people, but you didn't know you did. When they were mentioned, it was almost always with a snicker, and I don't mean the campy, insider cracks of "Will and Grace."
Remember that ignorance and ugliness? And if you're too young to remember, believe it. However bad it is now, it was far worse then.
Many gay people, of course, recognized each other long before they divulged themselves to the rest of us, as I learned the night David told me he was gay.
I stared at him for a while then, feeling his courage and his fear, trying to understand.
How had I not guessed? How had he held it in for so long? Did I know other gay people without knowing it? And what did it mean to be gay, anyway?
Over the years, as all of us, gay and straight, have come to realize how many gay people we actually do know, David has helped me more than anyone else to understand what it means to be gay--the beauty in it, the sadness and bliss, the confusion, the alienation, the pride, the community, the simple humanness.
So I asked him a question I keep hearing as the Gay Games come to Chicago this week--in fact, it's the same question posed in a story on the front page of this newspaper today: Do we really need these games anymore, assuming we ever did?
"I, personally, like the idea of gay competitors being able to be out and compete fair and square in the main Olympics," he said. "That feels like a huge educational accomplishment each time it can happen. But with so much conspiring against that, I think having the Games is a good interim step, a sort of jocks affirmative action run by us, for us."
It's "jocks affirmative action" for men who grew up in a world that called too many of them sissies, in which it was a brutal insult to tell a boy he ran or threw like a girl.
The Gay Games, founded in San Francisco in 1982, grew out of the recognition that the world views athletic competence as a measure of manhood. If that was the social game, gays would play.
Feminism spurred the games too: In some events, men would play alongside women and--at least in theory--playing your best mattered more than winning.
"It seems to me to perhaps have gotten de-emphasized of late," David said, "but the idea was that in this competition, inclusiveness was woven into the very fabric--no qualifying necessary, the cream would rise to the top of a fair field."
Sports is rarely just about sports, and the Gay Games aren't just about the games. They're about all the ways gays continue to be stigmatized and limited, from the athletic field to the military to marriage.
"We can't serve--supposedly because we inhibit unit cohesion and make Marines nervous in showers," David said. "We can't support our intimate relationships in marriage, lest we threaten the institution of marriage. We can't be out as teachers, or coaches, or baby-sitters, lest we corrupt the young."
And openly gay athletes still don't get a fair shot at commercial endorsements or the other perks of athletic prowess.
That's not some distant yesterday. That's July 2006.
It's been a generation since I knowingly met a gay person for the first time. A generation since the Gay Games started. A generation of huge, encouraging changes. And still not enough has changed.
Maybe the Games will have run their course when fear mongering about gays is no longer an effective political tactic.
"I guess the simple moral," David said, "is there's no need for a gay Olympics the day that there is no problem being who you are in the regular ones."
----------
mschmich@tribune.com
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
Published July 16, 2006
Who was the first gay person you ever met? The first openly gay person?
The first person I ever met was a college friend named David Nimmons, who would go on to become a gay activist, educator, writer and leader of workshops for gay men, including several in recent years in Chicago.
It was the early '80s. Until that breakthrough decade in this country, homosexuality was widely viewed as a shame, a sin, a disorder, a crime or, at best, a joke.
You may have known gay people, but you didn't know you did. When they were mentioned, it was almost always with a snicker, and I don't mean the campy, insider cracks of "Will and Grace."
Remember that ignorance and ugliness? And if you're too young to remember, believe it. However bad it is now, it was far worse then.
Many gay people, of course, recognized each other long before they divulged themselves to the rest of us, as I learned the night David told me he was gay.
I stared at him for a while then, feeling his courage and his fear, trying to understand.
How had I not guessed? How had he held it in for so long? Did I know other gay people without knowing it? And what did it mean to be gay, anyway?
Over the years, as all of us, gay and straight, have come to realize how many gay people we actually do know, David has helped me more than anyone else to understand what it means to be gay--the beauty in it, the sadness and bliss, the confusion, the alienation, the pride, the community, the simple humanness.
So I asked him a question I keep hearing as the Gay Games come to Chicago this week--in fact, it's the same question posed in a story on the front page of this newspaper today: Do we really need these games anymore, assuming we ever did?
"I, personally, like the idea of gay competitors being able to be out and compete fair and square in the main Olympics," he said. "That feels like a huge educational accomplishment each time it can happen. But with so much conspiring against that, I think having the Games is a good interim step, a sort of jocks affirmative action run by us, for us."
It's "jocks affirmative action" for men who grew up in a world that called too many of them sissies, in which it was a brutal insult to tell a boy he ran or threw like a girl.
The Gay Games, founded in San Francisco in 1982, grew out of the recognition that the world views athletic competence as a measure of manhood. If that was the social game, gays would play.
Feminism spurred the games too: In some events, men would play alongside women and--at least in theory--playing your best mattered more than winning.
"It seems to me to perhaps have gotten de-emphasized of late," David said, "but the idea was that in this competition, inclusiveness was woven into the very fabric--no qualifying necessary, the cream would rise to the top of a fair field."
Sports is rarely just about sports, and the Gay Games aren't just about the games. They're about all the ways gays continue to be stigmatized and limited, from the athletic field to the military to marriage.
"We can't serve--supposedly because we inhibit unit cohesion and make Marines nervous in showers," David said. "We can't support our intimate relationships in marriage, lest we threaten the institution of marriage. We can't be out as teachers, or coaches, or baby-sitters, lest we corrupt the young."
And openly gay athletes still don't get a fair shot at commercial endorsements or the other perks of athletic prowess.
That's not some distant yesterday. That's July 2006.
It's been a generation since I knowingly met a gay person for the first time. A generation since the Gay Games started. A generation of huge, encouraging changes. And still not enough has changed.
Maybe the Games will have run their course when fear mongering about gays is no longer an effective political tactic.
"I guess the simple moral," David said, "is there's no need for a gay Olympics the day that there is no problem being who you are in the regular ones."
----------
mschmich@tribune.com
posted by Carlos T Mock at 6:01 AM
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