News
Louganis: Russian Open Games marred by disruptions
Threats, smoke bomb, police target LGBT event
Retired Olympian Greg Louganis last December took part in a Russia briefing on Capitol Hill. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Retired Olympic diver Greg Louganis is among those who participated in the Russian Open Games that ended in Moscow on Sunday.
Louganis, who competed in a table tennis tournament during the five-day event that drew more than 300 LGBT athletes from Russia and other countries that include the U.S. and Sweden, arrived in the Russian capital early last week after he received a last-minute visa.
He left Moscow on Feb. 28.
The gay retired Olympian who won two gold medals during the 1998 Summer Olympics in Seoul and in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles participated in a Feb. 27 press conference at a Moscow gay nightclub that opened the Russian Open Games. A bomb threat forced him and organizers to speak with reporters outside in the building’s parking lot.
The Washington Post reported the U.S. Embassy hosted a basketball game between participants and diplomats on Sunday after a smoke bomb disrupted a tournament two days earlier.
Louganis, who learned he was living with HIV six months before competing in Seoul, told the Blade police escorted him and more than 30 other Russian Open Games participants out of an ice rink on Feb. 27 after someone reported a group of “strange people” had arrived. He said they had simply gone to the rink for what he described as a “group workshop” about “teaching us some skating skills.”
“They made it clear we were not welcome,” said Louganis. “Just the looks of disdain as we were escorted off the premises was just really concerning.”
Louganis told the Blade he was sending e-mails from a coffee shop across the street from the building where the Russian LGBT Network was holding a panel after the ice rink incident when Konstantin Yablotskiy of the Russian LGBT Sport Federation, which organized the Russian Open Games, said the event had been interrupted. He said Yablotskiy told him somebody suddenly turned off the lights and told them the venue would have to close if they didn’t leave.
Louganis said Yablotskiy and Elvina Yuvakaeva of the Russian LGBT Sport Federation told only one person about venues they had secured for various competitions – and this person escorted participants to them after they met at a Metro station. Louganis told the Blade that Yablotskiy told him to take precautions that included not saying anything specific during telephone conversations because he was sure “others were listening.”
“It was a very interesting environment,” said Louganis, noting he had last been to Moscow more than a decade before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. “It kind of reminded me of that; that everything was watched, was observed, scrutinized.”
The Russian Open Games took place a few days after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi ended.
The Kremlin’s LGBT rights record that includes a 2013 law banning gay propaganda to minors overshadowed the Sochi games. Organizers of the Russian Open Games did not allow anyone under 18 to participate – they also included a disclaimer on its website that read “the information on this site is intended only for the use of those aged 18 and over.”
St. Petersburg Legislative Assemblyman Vitaly Milonov, who spearheaded his city’s gay propaganda ban that inspired the law Russian President Vladimir Putin signed last June, denounced the Russian Open Games. The lawmaker also urged Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to cancel the event.
Yuvakaeva last week said four venues that had initially agreed to host the games abruptly cancelled their agreements. The hotel where the Russian LGBT Network had planned to hold its forum also cancelled the scheduled event.
Louganis told the Blade he had not heard about the 10 LGBT rights advocates who were arrested near Moscow’s Red Square on Feb. 7 as they tried to sing the Russian national anthem while holding rainbow flags before the Sochi opening ceremony. He said a gay couple he met in the Russian capital told him about the arrests – and the officers who reportedly beat and threatened to sexually assault the activists while inside a local police station.
St. Petersburg police on Feb. 7 arrested Anastasia Smirnova and three other LGBT rights advocates as they tried to march with a banner in support of the campaign to add sexual orientation to the Olympic charter’s non-discrimination clause.
“I really wanted to be a participant [in the Russian Open Games] just to get an objective view rather than the propagandized vision of what it was in Sochi,” Louganis told the Blade, discussing Russia’s LGBT rights record. “Sochi I heard was wonderful and everybody was bragging and the media was over-reacting and all of this. You don’t know until you’re there.”
Louganis was also in Moscow as Russian troops prepared to take control of Ukraine’s Crimea region amid outrage from the U.S. and Europe.
The Kremlin on Monday reportedly issued an ultimatum that demanded the surrender of the crews of two Ukrainian warships on the predominantly Russian-speaking peninsula where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to arrive in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday as tension between Washington and Moscow continues to escalate after the country’s Kremlin-backed president went into hiding following the deaths of dozens of anti-government protesters in Kiev.
“We were aware of what was going on with the borders being enforced,” said Louganis. “There was talk of invasion. There was this thing going on, but we were just focused on the event… with every turn we had to adjust and adjust and adjust. We were constantly trying to adjust to the immediate present and trying to make the Open Games as successful as we possibly could.”
Louganis added he was repeatedly impressed with the games’ organizers’ resilience against efforts to disrupt events.
“It was very impressive,” he told the Blade. “It was also very eye-opening for me from my personal experience.”
Maryland
What Anne Arundel County school board candidates think about book bans
State lawmakers passed Freedom to Read Act in April
BY ROYALE BONDS | Parents’ efforts to restrict content available to students in school libraries has become a contentious issue in Maryland. Conservative parent groups, such as Moms for Liberty, have been working to get books they believe are inappropriate removed from libraries in Carroll and Howard counties, sparking protests, new policies, and even a state law.
The Freedom to Read Act, passed in April, sets standards that books cannot be removed from public and school libraries due to an author’s background. Library staff that uphold the standard are protected under this act. The law, however, does not prohibit removing books deemed “sexually explicit,” the stated reason local Moms for Liberty chapters challenged school library books.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner website.
District of Columbia
D.C. Council member proposes change for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
Parker also seeks increased funding for LGBTQ programs in FY 2025 budget
D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only LGBTQ member, has asked his fellow Council members to support a proposal to change the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs to become a “stand-alone entity outside the Executive Office of the Mayor to allow for greater transparency and accountability that reflects its evolution over the years.”
In an April 30 letter to each of his 12 fellow Council members, Parker said he plans to introduce an amendment to the city’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Support Act to make this change for the LGBTQ Affairs Office.
His letter also calls for adding to the city’s FY 2025 budget two specific funding proposals that local LGBTQ activists submitted to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that the mayor did not include in her budget proposal submitted to the Council. One calls for $1.5 million to fund the completion of the build out and renovation for the D.C. Center for the LGBTQ Community’s new building in the city’s Shaw neighborhood and $300,000 in subsequent years to support the LGBTQ Center’s operations.
Parker’s second budget proposal calls for what he said was about $450,000 to fund 20 additional dedicated LGBTQ housing vouchers as part of the city’s existing program to provide emergency housing support for LGBTQ residents and other residents facing homelessness.
“The Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs currently manages about 90 vouchers across various programs and needs,” Parker said in his letter to fellow Council members. “Adding an additional 20 vouchers will cost roughly $450,000,” he wrote, adding that dedicated vouchers “play a crucial role in ensuring LGBTQ+ residents of the District can navigate the complex process of securing housing placements.”
In her proposed FY ’25 budget, Bowser calls for a 7.6 percent increase in funding for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, which amounts to an increase of $132,000, bringing the office’s total funding to $1.7 million.
“To be clear, I support the strong work and current leadership of the Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs,” Parker says in his letter to fellow Council members. “This push for change is in recognition of the office’s notable achievements and the significant demands being placed on it, which require a greater level of accountability.”
Parker told the Blade in an April 30 telephone interview that he believes Japer Bowles, the current director of the Office of L|GBTQ Affairs is doing an excellent job in operating the office, but he believes the office would be able to do more for the LGBTQ community under the change he is proposing.
“Making it a stand-alone office versus it being clustered within the Community Affairs division of the mayor’s office, it will get more attention,” Parker told the Blade. “The leadership will have greater flexibility to advocate for the interest of LGBTQ residents, And we will be able to conduct greater oversight of the office,” he said, referring to the Council’s oversight process.
Parker noted that other community constituent offices in the mayor’s office, including the Office of Latino Affairs and the Office of Veterans Affairs are stand-alone offices that he hopes to bring about for the LGBTQ Affairs Office. He said Council member Brianne Nadeau, who chairs the Council committee that has oversight for the LGBTQ Affairs Office, has expressed support for his proposal.
Also expressing support for Parker’s proposal to make the LGBTQ Affairs Office a stand-alone office is the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission Rainbow Caucus. Vincent Slatt, the caucus’s chairperson, submitted testimony last week before the D.C. Council Committee on Public Works and Operations, which is chaired by Nadeau, calling for making the LGBTQ Affairs Office a stand-alone office outside the Executive Office of the Mayor.
Slatt also stated in his testimony that the office has a “chronic staffing shortage” and recommended that at least three additional staff members be assigned to the office.
Daniel Gleick, the mayor’s press secretary, told the Blade the mayor’s office is reviewing Parker’s budget proposals, including the proposed change for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
National
United Methodist Church removes 40-year ban on gay clergy
Delegates also voted for other LGBTQ-inclusive measures
The United Methodist Church on Wednesday removed a ban on gay clergy that was in place for more than 40 years, voting to also allow LGBTQ weddings and end prohibitions on the use of United Methodist funds to “promote acceptance of homosexuality.”
Overturning the policy forbidding the church from ordaining “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” effectively formalized a practice that had caused an estimated quarter of U.S. congregations to leave the church.
The New York Times notes additional votes “affirming L.G.B.T.Q. inclusion in the church are expected before the meeting adjourns on Friday.” Wednesday’s measures were passed overwhelmingly and without debate. Delegates met in Charlotte, N.C.
According to the church’s General Council on Finance and Administration, there were 5,424,175 members in the U.S. in 2022 with an estimated global membership approaching 10 million.
The Times notes that other matters of business last week included a “regionalization” plan, which gave autonomy to different regions such that they can establish their own rules on matters including issues of sexuality — about which international factions are likelier to have more conservative views.
Rev. Kipp Nelson of St. Johns’s on the Lake Methodist Church in Miami shared a statement praising the new developments:
“It is a glorious day in the United Methodist Church. As a worldwide denomination, we have now publicly proclaimed the boundless love of God and finally slung open the doors of our church so that all people, no matter their identities or orientations, may pursue the calling of their hearts.
“Truly, all are loved and belong here among us. I am honored to serve as a pastor in the United Methodist Church for such a time as this, for our future is bright and filled with hope. Praise be, praise be.”
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