Sochi for Justice

The fact that I LOVE the winter Olympics should not come as a surprise to anyone. I delight in winter sports and when it comes to Olympic competition in them, I am an addict. But I confess that I feel torn about Sochi.

On 4 December, media outlets reported that retired figure skater, Johnny Weir had lashed out angrily at LGBT activists protesting anti-gay laws in Russia in an address delivered at Barnard College. According to these reports, Weir downplayed the impact of the laws, telling his audience that they only prevent having “anal sex in front of libraries.” Despite numerous reports (and videos posted online) of gay and transgender Russians being beaten, tortured, and humiliated by anti-gay thugs (who, by the way, seem very often to have also embraced neo-Nazism), Weir is reported to have justified his defense of Russia, arguing that he has never experienced homophobia in Russia.

I have been a fan of Weir’s for a very long time. He has been an elegant skater, blending athleticism with grace in breathtaking jumps and a sense of musicality unrivaled among the men against whom he skated. Weir has also faced his share of setbacks, including a disastrous freeskate at the U.S. National Championships in 2003. He came back the following year to win the National title in spectacular fashion. (See his 2004 Nationals long program here.) I have admired Weir’s tenacity, the grace of his own coming out, his in-your-face resistance of homophobia within the American skating world and among media commentators, in particular. But Weir seems to have gone off the rails on the matter of international participation in the Sochi Olympics. In some sense, although I’d like to believe those of us who feel torn about participation have not succumbed to the apologist stance Weir appears to have embraced recently, I do think his confusion mirrors our own.

There are arguments in favor of participation that make sense and Weir, himself, has made some of them. In this interview with Keith Olberman, Weir and Olberman discuss the ineffectiveness of Olympic boycotts, citing the failure of the international community to influence Soviet involvement in Afghanistan after their 1979 invasion of that country. In the interview, Weir also discusses that extraordinary moment in Olympic history when Jessie Owens won four gold medals during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin at the apex of Nazi power in Germany.

As it happens, my father was at those Olympic Games in Berlin. My dad wrote in the diary he kept at the time about his admiration of German social order and architecture, and about his pride at Owens’ accomplishments. And his fractured perception—or lack of perception—about the contradictions between these perspectives also reflects a kind of generalized myopia among Americans of the period: our collective inability to recognize our own racism, the resonances between that racism and the racial ideology of the Nazis, and the terrible if differently realized danger both ideologies posed to minorities in our respective nations. Owens, himself, noted that Franklin Roosevelt never acknowledged his victories saying, “Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.”

Weir was wrong to minimize the import and impact of homophobic law in Russia. He was also wrong to hold up his own individual experience as a gay man in Russia as a means of discrediting the experiences of Russian LGBTQ peoples who have been targeted both by state sanctioned and vigilante homophobes. Weir has an opportunity as a former Olympian and as an NBC commentator to speak up and speak out for justice and equality—to do so would be to make good on his own Olympic oath. Many more of us are also wrong or will be wrong if we do not recognize the opportunity we have to examine the contradictions between our condemnation of the Russians and the homophobia we tolerate or acquiesce to by our silence here at home.

I do not believe that boycotting the Sochi Olympics will have significant impact on homophobia within the Russian state. Sadly, I am not convinced that even the most extraordinary performances by LGBTQ athletes will change the minds and hearts of those who craft and enforce anti-gay laws nor the hearts and minds of those homophobic vigilantes in Russia who have taken it upon themselves to seek out, torture, and humiliate LGBTQ Russians. I also do not believe that those extraordinary performances will change the hearts and minds of U.S. legislators advocating that the perpetuation of their own American brand of homophobia be sanctioned by U.S. law. What those extraordinary performances will do, however, is to give heart to those who struggle for justice within Russia and beyond. They will be a gift to queer and ally activists around the world and most importantly, at this moment, in Russia. The Olympics are an inherently political gathering, designed to promote peace, international understanding, a sense of brother- and sisterhood among nations. I believe that the Sochi Olympics constitute an opportunity for athletes, coaches, the international media, and fans to make that Olympic principle manifest in the games and beyond and to honour the Russian activists who are risking their lives for freedom and equality.