Sport is a human right... and you have to be alive to play

"Team Uganda" entering Soldier Field in Chicago for the Opening Ceremony of Gay Games VII (photo Kat Fitzgerald for FGG/CGI)

From the very beginning of the Gay Games in 1982, our movement has been about equality and human rights. Since the first Gay Games, the life of gay men and lesbians has significantly improved in many places.

Spectators and participants present in Soldier Field at the Opening Ceremony of Gay Games VII heard plenty -- some thought too much -- about one of the last critical obstacles to equality in the USA, the right to marry the person you love. The Gay Games movement is part of this evolution that has lead the US and many other countries to progress toward true equality.

In other parts of the world, things have not improved so much, or have even regressed. One of those places is Africa. When Federation of Gay Games delegates came to Cape Town in 2008 for the FGG's Annual Meeting, we learned that even in the most progressive country in Africa, one where protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is written in the Constitution, gays and lesbians face violence and death.

But in South Africa, those committing these atrocities are considered criminals. Elsewhere, those who murder gays and lesbians are not considered criminals: they are considered moral, ethical officers of the law. In Uganda, for example, a country where homosexuality is already illegal and punishable by up to 14 years in prison, whatever the final text of the "anti-homosexuality bill" being adopted, the message is clear. Homosexual men and women must legitimately fear for their life and well-being.


This effort is being aided and abetted by the purveyors of hatred that the Federation knows all too well from having met them time and time again in public meetings, in courts, and most recently outside Soldier Field for Opening Ceremony, Wrigley Field for Closing Ceremony, Millennium Park for concerts and festivities, and a any number of sports venues. Perhaps because their message of hate is not going over so well in the US, self-styled "Christians" are working as missionaries of homophobia in Africa and elsewhere, spreading their lies and achieving so much more in terms of repression than they would be able to do back home.

The Federation encourages all members of the Gay Games movement to put pressure on their governments to denounce and oppose this law of murder and oppression in Uganda, and looks forward to welcoming our brothers and sisters from Africa at Gay Games VIII, where for a few days at least, they can live their lives as athletes, artists, as human beings, free from fear.

Because stadiums are to be used for sport, not as prisons, and swimming pools should be filled with water, not blood.