A motion to send an openly gay city councillor and a delegation to Sochi for the Winter Olympics was unanimously approved by Vancouver city council today.
Councillor and Deputy Mayor Tim Stevenson will be travelling to Sochi before the Olympics to lobby the IOC to change their charter to include sexual orientation.
Maureen Douglas. formerly of VANOC, along with Dean Nelson, one of the co-founders of Vancouver’s Pride House, will be travelling with Stevenson.
“We are open to doing whatever we can do to make a statement to the IOC. We felt it would be most effective if I was go there as an openly-gay man and deputy mayor, to lobby the IOC to change their charter.”
Stevenson says charter of the Paralympics already includes sexual orientation.
“Basically, I am going to be holding up a mirror, and saying look at your brothers and sisters here.”
As the previous host city, Stevenson says lots of people were urging Vancouver to boycott the Sochi Olympics because of Russia’s anti-gay laws.
Vancouver also initiated the Pride House, a safe place where LGBTQ athletes and their family and friends could gather. Sochi organizers have rejected the idea of a Pride House there, but one is in the works for Rio 2016.
Stevenson says he is going to ask the IOC to insist that all future Olympic host cities include a Pride House.
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“We can’t have this happen again, and we can’t have a country say, ‘no, we are not going to allow human rights in this area, because we don’t believe in human rights here.”
“We are not trying to change Russia, we are looking at the ones to come,” says Stevenson.
The City of Vancouver will pay for all of Stevenson’s expenses, while donations will pay for the other two members of the delegation.
The trip is expensive.
“You have to get package deals starting at a minimum of $15,000 per week per person, you can’t get it separately,” says Stevenson. “Plus airfares and meals — it may drop significantly down if we can find some savings, but we can’t count on that — Russia is out to make a lot of money on this.”
The trip to Sochi has received donations from developer Peter Wall and real estate marketing guru Bob Rennie.
Individuals have also contributed thousands of dollars in donations through an online fundraising campaign.
Stevenson is optimistic that the issues surrounding gay rights in Russia could improve in the future.
“I’ve been out since the 70s, and I could not have dreamed then that a gay person could ever marry. That was not even on our radar. We’ve had a social revolution in this country, so who knows?”
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