Controversy won’t stop the Sochi Games, but nothing should stop the athletes from speaking out.
Let’s deal with a couple of perhaps uncomfortable truths about the controversy surrounding the Sochi Olympics: There will not be a boycott, there was never going to be a boycott and the Games were never going to be moved out of Russia.
That’s not because the Olympic Games somehow exist on a plane above the base world of politics. Heck, if it wasn’t for politics, if it wasn’t for the flags and the anthems and the swell propaganda platform they provide for whoever gets to put on the big show, the Olympics would be a glorified track meet or hockey tournament, and nothing more. Rather, it’s because far too many are far too invested in this particular golden goose.
So next February, as scheduled, the nations of the world will gather in a place where the current government has made persecution of the LGBT community the law of the land, and none of the principals —the IOC, the sponsors and television partners, the governments of the nations involved—will offer more than token protest, and probably not even that.
It’s not the first time the Olympics have taken place where terrible things are happening—and if you live by the “glass houses” principle, you’d argue that every host country harbours something of which it ought to be ashamed, including us. But the IOC and its sponsors understand that once the parade begins and the cauldron is lit, real-world concerns fade into the background, buried beneath a wave of patriotism and sentimentalism.
The differences this time are just how blatant, repellent and intentionally provocative the new Russian anti-gay laws are—an impression backed by horrific videos flying around the Internet—and the fact that the LGBT community is universal and vocal and mobilized and ready for a fight, especially in countries where the cause of equal rights under the law has made enormous strides over the past quarter century.
But whose job is it to deliver a message in Sochi?
Forget about the IOC, who will dance with whoever pays the piper, or the Canadian government, which, even if it was inclined to put up a fight, would cite the futility of the tit-for-tat Cold War Olympic boycotts in 1980 and 1984 (and smaller, less well-remembered boycotts in 1976 and 1988) as evidence of the ineffectiveness of that approach. There will be the predictable rumblings in the media, as there are now, but when the time comes, it will be the rights-holders who largely determine how the world consumes the Olympics, and they won’t be doing any serious boat-rocking.
That leaves only the athletes, who will argue to a person that the Games must go on, understanding better than anyone how one Olympic cycle represents such a huge chunk of their competitive lives. They want to be there and they will be there, but that doesn’t mean they must remain mute, or adhere to either the Russians’ or the IOC’s party line, though to do otherwise will require exactly the kind of courage we’ve seen before.
In 1936, we all know that Jesse Owens went to Berlin and delivered a vivid rebuke to the Nazi belief in a master race. Less well-remembered are the athletes who refused to travel to Germany at all (among them two terrific Jewish-Canadian boxers, Sammy Luftspring and Baby Yack), who instead of marching in the Opening Ceremony in Berlin and flipping a jolly raised hand salute to Adolph Hitler as some did, headed for the People’s Olympiad in Barcelona, an event designed as a counter to the Nazi Games. (A day before the People’s Olympiad was to open, with many of the athletes already in Barcelona, the Spanish Civil War broke out, and the event was cancelled.)
And of course in Mexico City in 1968, John Carlos and Tommy Smith raised black-gloved fists on the medal podium, protesting entrenched racism back home in the United States. Now, long after the fact, that gesture is widely regarded as an act of principle and fortitude, like Muhammad Ali’s refusal to honour the draft for the Vietnam War, though at the time both were widely attacked.
There will be no alternate, protest Games in 2014, and perhaps no raised fists on the podium. But there will be gay Olympians in competition, as there have always been, fighting for medals in a place where a simple expression of their sexuality has been made illegal. And everyone living in the athletes’ village will have family, friends and co-workers who are part of the LGBT community. They have the stage, they are the product; it’s their show, it’s their time, the cameras will be on them and the whole world will be watching.
It’s going to take guts. It will not be without risk. But that’s exactly why if it happens—and it almost certainly will happen—it won’t be an empty gesture.