The Liberal-Activist Olympics
It may not be common knowledge, and I don't try to hide it, but I have an attitude about the "Special Olympics", and I've had this attitude for, oh, at least 25 years. It has nothing to do with nominally adorable special children, but saying so just sounds defensive so I usually don't. Largely I used to blame it on a telemarketer, but now I discover that the target of my enmity can change.
Tonight I found out that it's really (now) Judge Vaughan Walker who's to blame. Indeed, it's that same Judge Walker responsible for last week's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that found California's Proposition 8, barring same-sex couples from the institution of marriage, unconstitutional. Yep, this is the same Judge Walker who is now routinely (and oh-so-predictably) vilified by right-wing gay-haters as a "liberal activist".
Well, history shows that he's anything but a "liberal activist" in any sensible sense of the phrase. And, so do a series of newspaper articles from the archives that Jeremy Hooper has dug up ("Conservatives are so right — Vaughn Walker does have history of liberal activism….", Good As You, 11 August 2010), among them this clipping, which rather startled me:
I vividly remember this news from 1984. But to pick up the story in 1982, let's recall the history of the Gay Games (from Wikipedia)
The Gay Games is the world's largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBT athletes, artists, musicians, and others. It welcomes participants of every sexual orientation and every skill level. Originally called the Gay Olympics, it was started in San Francisco in 1982, as the brainchild of Tom Waddell, whose goals were to promote the spirit of inclusion and participation, as well as the pursuit of personal growth in a sporting event. It retains many similarities with the Olympics, including the Gay Games flame which is lit at the opening ceremony.
Note particularly that "Originally called the Gay Olympics…" phrase. At that time everything and it's uncle, if it had anything to do with a competitive sporting event, was called the "X Olympics" and nobody thought anything of it. The word "olympics" was widely used in a generic sense to describe such competitive events and there was every sort of "Blank Olympics" you could imagine for every recognizable group of people with a name to describe them. Many of them still survive, particularly the "Special Olympics".
Until, that is, the "Gay Olympics" came along. Oh dear! Suddenly the U.S.Olympic Committee got very uppity about what they felt was their trademarked word being used by just anybody. In tried-and-true form they claimed that their reaction was not homophobic or anything, they just felt that the time had come to protect their brand. They sued the organizers of the "Gay Olympics" and they won. As you can see from the clipping above, the attorney for the U.S.Olympic Committee was the "liberal activist" Vaughan Walker, now Judge Walker.
That's not where my attitude came from, however. In 1984 the decision was fresh in my mind from reporting in the nearly underground gay press of the time, and I found it irritating, disingenuous, and gratuitously homophobic on the part of the U.S.Olympic Committee. In fact, I'm not sure I've paid much attention to any Olympic games since then.
But, this was all fresh in my mind when I received that fateful call from the telemarketer soliciting contributions to the "Special Olympics", of all things. I declined. I refused to give reasons or blame this group that for the way that they got to use the word "olympics" with such impunity. I was pleasant to her in my refusal.
Until she said to me: "What have you got against retarded kids?" I found her presumption so appallingly rude that I hung up the phone lest I waste my energy one moment longer on such a vile, unthinking, insensitive drone. And, like it or not, I still cringe whenever I hear the phrase "Special Olympics" pronounced, as it invariably is, in gentle, admiring, and inclusive tones.
Happily, the Gay Games has prospered since then, becoming the largest sports event in the world, a fabulous occasion every four years for which potentital host cities compete with enthusiasm (except for a few in some parts of the US), regardless of what it's called. Take that, USOC!
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Friday, 13 August 2010 at 03.09
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That arrogant pettiness seems in keeping with the USOC. I don't follow sports, but the few things I've read about the USOC on several matters over quite a few years have been uncomplimentary, with good reason.
Nothing wring with Gay Games for a name.