Posted on 07/26/2006 4:45:15 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
ROWING, hockey, marathon, square dancing and best bondage or leather outfit competitions are all events at the first Out Games, preceded by the opening today of a human rights conference.
Organisers of this "alternative" gay games said they expect some 12,000 amateur athletes, thousands of spectators and delegates from 100 countries for the rights conference.
Co-president and swimmer Mark Tewksbury, a gold medallist in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, said he hoped the event would also nurture tolerance in sports.
"Homophobia is rampant in professional sports. The locker room mentality says we can't develop in a virile, masculine world. Showing a feminine side is considered a sign of weakness, and makes us vulnerable to attacks," he told Montreal French-language magazine L'actualite.
Tewksbury and tennis legend Martina Navratilova will open the sports competitions on Sunday after the three-day rights conference with a "Declaration of Montreal" on gay rights.
The games' 35 competition include synchronised swimming, karate, basketball, weight-lifting, golf and wrestling.
Up to 20 per cent of athletes at the Montreal games are heterosexual, organisers said.
Millions of dollars in tourist spending are also at stake as the city tries to foment a reputation as a gay-friendly vacation hot spot, tourism officials said.
"The Right to Be Different" rights conference will bring together 2000 delegates to discuss human rights and include a keynote speech by UN Human Rights head Louise Arbour.
The conference aims is to promote gay, lesbian and transsexual rights worldwide, particularly in countries which ignore or trample on them, organisers said.
"The goal is to get an official declaration at the United Nations asking for recognition of gay rights. There are rights for children, women, handicapped people, but no gay rights," Out Games director Louise Roy said.
"There are still UN members who oppose gay rights, but we hope to take small steps that will eventually bring us to the recognition of gay rights. In Canada, we're less preoccupied with such because we've already achieved equal rights, but there are many countries where it remains very difficult to be gay," she said.
Closing ceremonies will be held on August 5.
An offshoot of the Federation of Gay Games, which held its seventh meet in Chicago last week, the Montreal event aimed for a more ambitious mission than its predecessor after the city was overlooked to host the original games.
Its goal is to foster tolerance and understanding, and to build bridges between the gay community and broader society, rather than simply celebrate gay pride - the focus of the Gay Games since its inception in San Francisco in 1982.
I heard it was the pole smoke.
Thw weightlifting can be exciting.
The "Clean and Jerk" is especially fun.
The big winners in the towns that hold these games are the bars.
They can really pack 'em in.
One wooden bar stool will seat four, if you turn it upside-down.
They're too stupid...(or is it amoral?)...to be ashamed.
The 50 meter breast stroke.
A gay man walks into a gay bar, pulls out a stool and sits down. Another gay man walks up to him and asks "can I push in your stool"?
“Up to 20 per cent of athletes at the Montreal games are heterosexual, organizers said.”
...talk about living dangerously; they'll have to go to Toronto to take a shower...
Growing up a game we'd play was smear the queer which I'm pretty sure isn't allowed at school anymore.
Anyway I was wonderin if maybe we could get a team together and head off to ........... oh wait Jim has a prohibition against that right down here under the word wrap button never mind............................
paging Lamar Latrelle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTb1ia5esMA
LOL! That started my day off on a good note.
What happened to the last guy's head? It seems at thought the cartoonist just gave up drawing.lol.
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