GAMES,GAY Tionality, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Or an International Festival of Ath- Athletic Ability
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GAMES,GAY tionality, sexual orientation, religion, or An international festival of ath- athletic ability. In keeping with the Mas- letic competitions and the arts, the Gay ters Movement in sports, athletes com- Games are held quadrennially as a celebra- peted with others in their own age group. tion of the international gay community. The track and field and swimmingevents The first and second Gay Games were held were officially sanctioned by their re- in San Francisco in August of 1982 and spective national masters programs. 1986. The third Games are scheduled Athletes participated, not as representa- for the summer of 1990 in Vancouver, tives of their respective countries, but as Canada. individuals on behalf of cities and towns. The Gay Games at San Francisco There were no minimum qualifyingstan- were founded by Tom Waddell and organ- dards in any events. ized by San Francisco Arts and Athletics, The Games have been used by Inc. The 1982 Games involved 1,300 male gay liberationists for ideological purposes. and female athletes in sixteen sports; four Historically, homosexuality has been as- years later the games attracted 3,482 ath- sociated with pathology, and the rise of letes with a ratio of men to women of 3:2 AIDS in the homosexual community has in a total of 17 sports. (This may be con- reasserted that association. Many of those trasted with the 1984 Olympics in Los who spoke at the 1986 Games said that Angeles where the sex ratio was 41.) the Games emphasized a healthy image Among the events were basketball, soccer, of gay men and lesbians. Brown also said bowling, cycling, diving, triathlon, soft- in her opening address that the Games ball, physique, track and field, marathon, "show the world who we really area. power-lifting, volleyball, swimming, ten- We're intelligent people, we're attractive nis and wrestling. The artistic festival, people, we're caring people, we're healthy called "The Procession of the Arts," fea- people, and we're proud of who we are." tured over twenty events including dance, The organizers of the Gay Games theatre and plastic art exhibits. Although have experienced considerable legal diffi- athletescame frommanyparts of the world, culties. Before the 1982 Gay Games, the the majority were from North America. United States Olympic Committee In her opening address at the 1986 (USOCJfiled a court action against the Gay Games, novelist Rita Mae Brown organizers of the Gay Games, which were highlighted the meaning of the games, going to be called the "Gay Olympic ". these games are not just a celebration Games." In 1978, the United States of skill, they're a celebration of who we are Congress passed the Amateur Sports Act and what we can become: . a celebration which, among other things, granted the of the best in us." USOC exclusive use of the word "olym- Tom Waddell said that the Games pic." Although the USOC had allowed were "conceived as a new idea in the the "Rat Olympics," "Police Olympics," meaning of sport based on inclusion rather and "Dog Olympics," it took exception than excl~sion.~'Anyone was allowed to to the term "Gay Olympic Games." Two compete regardless of race, sex, age, na- years later, the USOC continued its 4 GAMES, GAY harassment of the Gay Games and filed and the Renaissance (above all Giovanni suit to recover legal fees in the amount of Boccaccio in his Genealogia Deorum of $96,600. A lien was put on the house of 1375) presented a number of examples of TomWaddell,amemberofthe1968United the male amours of the Greek gods, and States Olympic Team. these texts influenced artists. In 1532Mich- Just as the Sacred Olympic Games elangelo created a drawing of Ganymede andpythian Games in ancient Greece were Abducted by the Eagle for presentation to a celebration which gave expression to a Roman nobleman, Tommaso de' Cavali- Hellenic values of the time, so, too, the eri, forwhom he experienceda deep, though Gay Games are a celebration and expres- Platonic affection. Other images of sion of the contemporary spirit of the gay Ganymede were produced by Correggio, community. Parmigianino, Giulio Romano, and Brian Pronger Benvenuto Cellini. In the French language, begin- ning in the sixteenth century, the divine youth's name became a common noun, GANYMEDE with the sense of "passive homosexual" or In Greek Ganymede bardache. Joachim duBellay (1558)speaks was a beautiful Phrygian shepherd boy of seeing in Rome Hun Ganym&deavoir le who attracted the attention of Zeus, the rouge sw. la t6teu ["A Ganymede with red king of the gods. Unable to resist the boy, on his head," that is, a cardinal).The Die- Zeus seized him and carried him aloft to be tionnuire comique ( 17181 of P. J. Le R~~~ his cupbearer and bedmate on Mount is explicit: "Ganymede: berdache, a young ~lympus. hil lethe motif of flightthrough man who offers pleasure, permitting the the heavens is probably of Near Eastern act of sodomy to be committed on him." origin, the abduction recalls the Cretan In As You Like It (Act I] custom of older men "kidnapping" their Shakespeare made the transvestite Rosa- adolescent innamorati and living with ~n~assumet~enameo~~anyme~e,~~ove~s them in the wild for a time. (Plato states own page.^^ rn 1611 the lexicographer that the myth of Ganymede originated in ~~~dl~cotgravedefined u~~~~~~d~u as Crete.) In any event the is part a an ingle [passivehomosexual or catamite). large Set of stories of the Olympian gods A pointed reference comes from Drum- falling in love with mortal boys. mond of Hawthornden: "I crave thou wilt In ancient art Zeus is sometimes be pleased, peat God, to save my sover- depicted abducting the boy in mortal form ,ig,from a canymedeu (16491, referring to and sometimes in the guise of an eaglet his the tradition of royal minions at the Stuart attribute. Vasepaintings occasionallyshow court. such associations the anthro~om~~~hicZeus pursuing in the seventeenth century Simon Marius Gan~medeasananaloguetothewooing named Jupiter's largest moon after ~~nductedby n~ortalpederasts. In later Ganymede, giving him preference over the antiquity the motif of the beautiful youth female lovers who are commemo- beingcarriedaloftb~an eagle wasgiven an rated in the names given to the smaller allegorical significance, as the soul's flight moons. ~h~~ the way was paved for away from earthly cares to the serenity of Ganymede to enter today's age of space the empyrean. exploration. In the medieval debate poem Altercatio Ganimedis et Helenae [twelfth BIBLIOGRAPHY.Gerda Kempter, century) Ganymede conducts an able de- Ganymed: Studien zur Typologie, Ikonographie und Ikonologie, Cologne: fense of male homosexuality. The Bohlau Verlag, 1980; James M. Saslow, mythographers of the later Middle Ages Gnnymede in the Renaissance: Homo- sexuality in Art and Society, New connote the conduct of a playboy or dash- Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. ing man about town, whose behavior was Wayne R. Dynes not always strictly moral but not totally depraved either; hence the popularity of GARC~ALORCA, such expressions as "gay lothario," "gay FEDERICO deceiver," and "gay blade." Applied to women in the nineteenth century (or per- See Lorca, Federico Garcia. haps somewhat before), it came to mean "of loose morals; a prostitute": "As soon GAY as a woman has ostensibly lost her reputa- tion we, with grim inappositeness, call her This word is often taken as the 'gay"' (Sunday Times, London, 1868). contemporary or colloquial equivalent of Curiously the 18 11Lexicon Balatronicum, homosexual without further distinction. attributed to Captain F. Grose, defines But there are other nuances of meaning, especially as some activists vigorously guying instrument as "penis." Thus far, the development has an interesting fore- disown the latter term which they falsely believe to be of medical origin and bear the runner in the Latin lascivus, which first stigma of the pathological, while others meant "lively, frolicsome," and then "lewd, wanton." would see in gay the designation of the What was to come, however, has politically conscious and militant sup- no independent parallel in any other lan- porter of the homosexual liberation move- ment, as opposed to sexual orientation guage. The expansion of the term to mean which is an artifact of personal history homosexual man constitutes a tertiary stage of modification, the sequence being rather than a matter of deliberate choice. To some the word has proven trouble- "lothario," then "female prostitute," then some, and for this reason it merits ex- "homosexual man." Viewed in the per- tended discussion. spective of the saturation of nineteenth- The word gay (though not its three century usage by the spectacle of the "gay later slang meanings) stems from the Old woman" (- whore), this final application Proven~algai, "high spirited, mirthful." A to homosexual men could not fail to bear derivation of this term in turn from the overtones of promiscuity and "fallen" Old High German gahi, "impetuous" (cf. status. Despite ill-informed speculations, modem German jlih, "sudden"), though thus far not one unambiguous attestation attractive at first sight, seems unlikely. of the word to refer specifically to homo- Gai was a favorite expression among the sexual men is known from the nineteenth troubadours, who came to speak of their century. The word (and its equivalents in intricate art of poetry as gai saber, "gay other European languages) is attested in knowledge." Despite assertions to the the sense of "belonging to the demi- contrary, none of these uses reveals any monde" or "given to illicit sexual plea- particular sexual content. In so far as the sures," even specifically to prostitution, word gay or gai has acquired a sexual but nowhere with the special homosexual meaning in Romance languages, as it has sense that is reinforced by the antonym very recently, this connotation is entirely straight, which in the sense of "heterosex- owing to the influence of the American ual" was known exclusively in the gay homosexual liberation movement as a subculture until quite recently.