by Mark Gabrish Conlan • for SAME Alliance, www.samealliance.com, e-mail info@samealliance.com
We,
SAME Alliance of San Diego County, strongly condemn the International
Olympic Committee (IOC)’s decision to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in
Sochi, Russia, at a time when Russia’s government is mounting a massive
campaign of repression not only against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender people but against anyone who advocates for their rights or
presents them in a positive way. We also condemn the IOC’s decision to
hold the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when half the
world’s reported hate murders of Transgender people occur in Brazil. We
call on the IOC never again to hold an Olympics in a country that does
not guarantee full equal rights, including marriage equality, for its
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.
We
question the sincerity of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pledge that
no Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual people would be arrested or harassed during
the Sochi Olympics. Already there has been at least one report of an
Olympic security person harassing and detaining a spectator for holding a
rainbow Pride flag. When both the Winter and Summer Olympics were held
in Nazi Germany in 1936, Adolf Hitler made a similar pledge with regard
to Jewish people participating in or witnessing the Games.
We
call on all U.S. corporations involved in sponsoring the Sochi
Olympics, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, to acknowledge the
controversies surrounding the Games and stop advertising the Sochi
Olympics as a worldwide celebration of sportsmanship and good will. We
call on these companies to publicly oppose and condemn the harsh Russian
laws targeting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. We urge
individuals to consider the unwillingness of such companies to consider
the dark side of the Sochi Games when making their personal purchasing
decisions.
We call on all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender athletes participating in the Games to make public gestures
of support for equal rights similar to those made by Tommie Smith and
John Carlos, who publicly protested racial discrimination by raising
their fists in the air during medal ceremonies in the 1968 Olympics.
We
see the anti-LGBT legislation of the Russian government and the wanton
murders of Transgender people in Brazil as just part of a worldwide
campaign against the rights, and indeed against the very existence, of
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. In the U.S., Canada and
most of Western Europe, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people
are successfully struggling for expanded civil rights, including the
right to marry. In the rest of the world — in Russia, Uganda, Nigeria,
India and many other countries, including some with ostensibly
democratic governments — Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people
are fighting for their sheer survival against both government repression
and the vengeance of private mobs. Even worse, many of these countries
justify their legislative attacks on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender people by saying they are defying the “loose” moral codes of
the West — when in many cases it was Western powers, during the age of
colonialism and outright imperialism, that imposed these laws on these
countries in the first place. We pledge to support, in whatever ways we
can, the struggles of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in
these countries against these laws.
Finally, we call on
the IOC to allow Transgender athletes in future Olympics to compete in
the gender with which they identify and be given the rights provided to
California public school students by the recently passed AB 1266.
Submitted by Mark Gabrish Conlan • January 28, 2014
SAME
Alliance is an open and democratically run grass-roots organization
dedicated to Queer liberation and the struggle for social justice
through activism, education and support for broader movements.
SAME Alliance Goals and Objectives include:
1) An end to all legal and extra-legal penalties for all sexual expression between consenting adults worldwide.
2)
Extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ban all discrimination based
on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
3)
Full legal recognition of all marriages and intimate relationships
between consenting adults without regard to their biological or
self-perceived gender.
4) Comprehensive immigration
reform in the U.S., including a path to citizenship for all immigrants
and the right of U.S. citizens in relationships with foreign nationals
to sponsor their partners for immigration purposes.
5)
Full protection for all workers who wish to organize into unions and
bargain collectively with their employers, including immediate
recognition of any union once it has enrolled a majority of the workers
in a workplace or bargaining unit.
6) Immediate freedom
and full exoneration for Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, John
Kiriakou, Lynne Stewart and all other political prisoners in the
so-called “war on terror,” and an end to all use of torture, deliberate
targeting of civilians and drone strikes against civilian populations in
the so-called “war on terror.”
More information is available at www.samealliance.com.
