The largest and most welcomed gay and lesbian gathering in the city's history has begun drawing scores of thousands of homosexual athletes and tourists to town for the Gay Games sporting and cultural festival and for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that first signaled gay people's resolve to fight for public tolerance.
"We're all over the place," said Jay Hill, executive director of the fourth quadrennial Gay Games that begin Saturday with men and women from 44 nations competing around the metropolitan area in various arenas and pools, on football fields and ice rinks, and across a Hudson climbers' rock face, too.
The eight days of games will lead to the more politically pointed Stonewall commemoration on June 26 when the organizers estimate that hundreds of thousands of people will march past the United Nations to Central Park in pursuit of gay rights progress on the international level.
Celebration and Politics
While separately conceived and organized, the two events are intended to be a watershed of fun and courage for gay and lesbian people and a nonthreatening revelation for heterosexuals. Several more radical factions like Act Up and the Lesbian Avengers are vowing individual actions to show that the gatherings are not monolithic, but mainstream sponsors say the sheer number of participants will be the ultimate homosexual statement.
"Any time any of us come out, that's a political act," said Janice Thom, a member of the Stonewall 25 executive committee, stressing that the two celebrations are quite different in design, with the Stonewall commemoration political and the games celebratory. "But we only add to each other," she said, saying there are a few common services like medical care for visitors with AIDS.
The nine-day celebration of gay culture is as much a measure of the city's shifting attitude as of the progress of gay rights. The night-stick fury of the police toward homosexuals in the Stonewall uprising has been eclipsed by a more welcoming New York anticipating business profits in excess of $100 million for the week. Significantly, police headquarters quickly established a cooperative liaison with the gay and lesbian public.
"The ironies are unbelievable," said Lieut. Don Jirak, who came out as a gay man four years ago and is finding his career far from threatened. He is on special duty in the headquarters command to help guarantee that all goes well in the myriad athletic games, cultural events and political lobbying.
"Here we are commemorating this interaction between the police and lesbian and gay community, and now we have openly gay sergeants, lieutenants and cops helping the participants; it's remarkable," said the lieutenant, who has been working overtime lately with a lesbian officer, Detective Vanessa Ferro, in the special events office.
Thirty-eight of the 100 members of the Out to Swim club in London made the trip, and some dropped by the 18th-floor unity center at the Pennsylvania Hotel last evening to check long lists of social events and gay bars. "There are some guys who really believe in the competition," said one swimmer who would identify himself only as Ping N. "For me, it's about camaraderie and being with people you care for."
Many in the growing influx were first-time visitors, said Richard Burns, director of the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. "For many of them, what you find is that Greenwich Village is a state of mind," he said of the city's fabled sanctuary for gay life.
For all the muscle flexing and banner unfurling, there are plenty of non-athletes in the homosexual public ready to sit out and satirize some of the proceedings even as they welcome old friends and the ongoing cause. "My life as a sports role model: I was always the last kid picked on the neighborhood teams," said Jamie Brickhouse, a stand-up comic preparing a fresh monologue on gayness as part of a festival of evening entertainment. "It's going to be absolutely chaotic in the city, but I guess it will be wonderful for the high visibility for gays. "
'Taking Center Stage'
After four years of preparing for the games and the 10,000 enrolled competitors, Mr. Hill, the executive director, is grateful for the extra momentum provided by the commemoration of the Stonewall uprising. He expects something far more than the exuberance of "separatist games. "
"This is about gays and lesbians taking center stage," he declared, "and saying, 'This is who we really are,' and celebrating our own history and our own culture."
The games, originated in San Francisco by the late Dr. Tom Waddell, offer numerous running and swimming events and a competitive array ranging from martial arts to flag football, coed ice hockey to racquetball, and bodybuilding to golf.
Since the last Gay Games in Vancouver, B.C., the competition has grown to 31 events, including the introduction of same-sex pairs figure skating. "The difficult part is he has to be the woman and has never had himself lifted off the ground and been thrown around before," said Gary Pascua, a gay actor, dancer and roller skater, as he gingerly practiced ice-dance twirls with an old friend, 120-pound Bill Leclerc.
"We thought it would be great fun to give it a try and do some sort of comedy routine for the occasion," Mr. Pascua said as Andrew Lloyd Webber music oozed about a practice rink near Madison Square Garden.
'It's Being Human'
Outsiders ask why gay people feel the need to have separate, elaborate athletic games in the first place. The answers echo the self-celebrations offered by organized war veterans, barbershop quartet aficionados, volunteer fire department ladder-hoisting competitors or any variety of life's leisure addicts. But with extra emphasis on the right to, and need for, acceptance amid humanity.
"This is so very large and so very open-minded," explained Geert Blanchart, a gay athlete on the Belgian national ice-skating team who competed in the recent Winter Olympics and who will be here for the roller blading events. "When countries come together like this, it's not to promote being gay. It's being human. Sport is a very kind way to share life and its emotion."
For women, the big new event will be lesbian wrestling.
"A great opportunity for me to be all that I am: an Afro-American lesbian grandmother wrestler," exulted Juanita Harvey, a 37-year-old Brooklyn resident. With her grandchildren admiring her muscles and with her companion watching her training diet, Ms. Harvey has been practicing 10 hours a week at the Knights Wrestling Club in Greenwich Village.
A Week of Lobbying
Beyond the games and march, the Stonewall committee is looking forward to a week's lobbying for gay rights at United Nations consulates and to many special group forums ranging from issues like race relations among gays to the situation of parents of gay people.
A few complaints about the homosexual throngs and games have been voiced by the Rev. Ruben Diaz, a former campaign aide for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and a member of the police Civilian Complaint Review Board. He drew mixed condemnation and support in contending that the games might invite youths to conclude that there is "nothing wrong nor any risks involved" in gay life.
Overall, the city's initial aura runs from acceptance to nonchalance, especially with AT&T, Miller Brewing, Continental Airlines and other corporations identifying with the games for the first time as sponsors.
Critics' questions about participants' private behavior are dismissed as hypocritical. "I used to work all the major sporting events," said Mr. Hill, a television sportswriter before he became the games director. "I know the debauchery that routinely goes on at them, whether it's the Kentucky Derby, the Indy 500 -- the wild partying, the singles bars, the heterosexual scene. Nobody asks about that kind of stuff," he said.
Major New York politicians, aware of the gay vote's bloc power, are eager to seem helpful. Both Mayor Giuliani and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo are scheduled to speak at the opening ceremonies.
A Range of Age and Motives
Participants' motives range from larkish recreation to grave competitiveness. There is no age requirement, and the field currently includes athletes in their eighth decade as well as a 13-year-old gay Belgian boy whose parents are permitting him to compete as a swimmer.
The Clinton Administration's contribution to the games was a 10-day waiver of the visa requirement for foreign visitors who have AIDS or the virus that causes it. The games will include H.I.V.-positive participants, who, like Ric Munoz, a distance runner preparing for his 64th marathon, are dedicated to athletics for durability and hope.
"You can keep all the parties, all the rah-rah-rah," said the 36-year-old runner. "We're here to give it our best. We want to show you how good we are."
The usual wariness of city visitors, gay or not, is not entirely absent. "In the light of the St. Patrick's parade fight over gay marching, homophobia isn't too far below the surface," said Michael Goff, editor and publisher of Out magazine. "There'll be a lot of testosterone running around," he added, referring to the coincidental opening of the World Cup soccer tournament at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Lieutenant Jirak begs to differ, noting the police have a long history of maintaining order during challenging events.
"It would be nice if such a thing as the Gay Games were not necessary, but at the moment they are," said Bruce Hayes, a swimmer who came out as gay after winning a gold medal on a United States Olympic relay team in 1984. He found the Gay Games an improvement over the discrimination that he said haunts the Olympics. "The Gay Games was the first time I ever felt comfortable to be myself and was not afraid," he said.
42 Sites
The games are planned as a $6.5 million break-even operation taking place at 42 venues, from an ice rink in Coney Island to Yankee Stadium, from the Amsterdam billiard parlor in Manhattan to the Inner Wall climbers' challenge north of the city in New Paltz. Mr. Hill, the director, has been busy answering the questions of concerned community boards and settling the complaints of trans-gender competitors who will be taken at their word for the first time and no longer need a doctor's note.
But a sense of mainstream normalcy, hardly aberration, has been one of the games' greatest benefits since they began, Mr. Hill said. He particularly celebrates the erosion of provincialism among gay people, noting that the Frontrunners Club favored by lesbian and gay runners had only five branches before the 1982 games, but now has 60 branches worldwide.
"One of the most recent ones is in Grand Rapids, an hour from where I grew up in Kalamazoo," he said, recalling small-town teen years when he thought gays were "freaks" because they were forced to be clandestine. "Now they will have something to do besides just go to some dive bar."
Charles Kaiser, a gay journalist writing a modern history of homosexuals' tribulations in the city, is decidedly sedentary about all the coming out at starting lines and winners' circles. But not so about the Stonewall parade or the week's historic significance. "This will be the coming of age of the movement," he estimated from the sidelines, anticipating a grand new sporting chance for gays in the New York showcase.
