Vancouver's Games Will Be the Gayest Olympics Ever

The Olympics are coming out of the closet. These Games will have the first-ever Pride House. Two of them, actually: one opened yesterday in Whistler in a cocktail lounge, and the other will open in the heart of Vancouver's West End on Thursday.

People are saying, in short, it will be the gayest Olympics ever. Not only because of the Pride Houses, or the number of out athletes, but because being gay won't be an invisible part of these Games.

"I would say it was very emotional at the beginning," said Charley Walters, of the opening speeches in Whistler. He and his reporting partner Tyler Duckworth from Olympics or Bust shoot independent Olympic videos for outlets such as MTV. This is the fifth Games they've covered. While Walters doesn't want to place too much importance on it, he said today he had a sense of history being made, or "the birth of something that's bound to be an Olympic staple," and that this is the beginning of a new tradition. There were people at the ceremony from cultures where being gay is not only "unacceptable but criminal." Then the party started.

Why here? Why now? According to those involved, it just happens to be the right city at the right time, with a lucky coincidence to start it all off.

First, the coincidence. In 1992, Brent Benaschak was heading to Vail's gay ski week when Colorado passed Article 2, a piece of homophobic legislation. He decided to found Whistler Gay Ski Week, rather than give a discriminatory state his money. Now one of the biggest in the world, it's an annual event.

But it's held every February, and no one involved wanted to cancel or relocate this year. So organizer Dean Nelson started talking with VANOC and the municipality of Whistler to move the date (it's now in early March). Which got Nelson thinking about the Olympics, how the gay community isn't really represented and how they could be.

There are sure to be almost non-stop parties at Whistler's Pan Pacific Hotel lounge, which is hosting Pride House, but Nelson is also focused on celebrating recent successes in wiping out homophobia, and raising awareness about what still needs to change in sport and elsewhere.

"Here, in Canada, it's pretty cushy. If you're gay, you're treated like a real human being," he says, while making last-minute preparations for the launch. But being gay is illegal in 14 of the countries participating in the Games, and in two, homosexual acts are punishable by death.

That's why at Vancouver's Pride House, even though the focus will be on making people feel welcome and safe, creating a space to meet up with friends and even trade pins, they also want to encourage people to share their experiences about gay life in other countries. Maps will show where it's illegal to be gay, where it's punishable by death, where it's legal to be married and where it's not.

Refugee counselors will also be on hand. "If there's an athlete, a visitor, or whatever, and they say, 'You know what I can't go back,'" because of discrimination in their home country, "we'll have people here to walk them through the process," says Jennifer Breakspear, the executive director of Qmunity, which is hosting Vancouver's Pride House. Maybe no one will claim asylum at these Games, she says, but in almost every Olympics held in a Western nation, at least one person has.

Breakspear says the issue of being gay has really come out of the closet recently. In addition to her initial idea to create the kind of place she herself would want to visit if she was out of town, she knew the prominence of gay issues in the news made it an auspicious time to be hosting people from around the world. "Anywhere in Canada, same-sex couples can be legally married. We're not in such a tiny club as when this first happened in 2005, but our immediate neighbors to the south are still fighting for this in most of the states. And most of Europe is still working to get legal same-sex marriage."