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Previously:
Dug
Funnell has let baseball know that homophobia won't be
tolerated.
Marc
Davino is the driving force behind an incredibly successful
basketball league.
Know of
someone making a difference in the gay sports community? Tell us
about them at mail@outsports.com
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Every month we'll highlight someone in the gay sports community who
is making a difference on, or off, the field.
Lorrie Kim
Cracking Open the Closet Door in Male Figure Skating
Lorrie Kim's Web site, Rainbow
Ice, is a must for any figure skating fan. It deals with ``lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered issues in
the sport.'' It is extremely thorough, yet fair, with a complete
list of out elite and adult skaters. Kim, a bisexual woman, started
the site as a labor of love, but it is quickly becoming a ``must
bookmark'' for anyone who loves the sport. We asked her to write
about how she got started and how the
site has evolved. Also, take the Rainbow
Ice Poll on who is the hottest skater.
By Lorrie Kim
Special to Outsports.com
 I
was an activist and journalist for LGBT issues for years
before I was a figure skating fan.
It fascinated me that this overwhelmingly femme sport, with
many clearly gay participants, was so profoundly in the closet
that I wanted to tell them the news about the Stonewall
riots.
You've never seen so many adult men, fully gay in their
private lives, convinced not only that coming out would
destroy them -- but that the presumably clueless public would
be shattered if they knew.
At the same time, I found that the straight women who make up
most of skating fandom did not know how to discuss gay issues.
They wanted to protect closeted skaters, so their only tactic
was a well-meaning but tight-lipped, "We don't talk about
that here."
I wanted to introduce the clear guideline that it is
acceptable to discuss a skater's sexual orientation, if it has
been acknowledged publicly in reliable media.
So there needed to be a list of skaters who were out, and
reliable references (more reliable, anyway, than
"everyone knows") to confirm that they are out
publicly and legitimately. Rainbow Ice started originally to
fill that need. To my knowledge, no closeted skater has ever
contacted me, although I have approached some myself.
The site went live on July 15, 1998. I also wanted a way to
trace the progress of gay acceptance in the sport. There was
some hope after Rudy Galindo came out in 1995 that many others
would feel free to follow suit.
That has not happened at all -- many seem content to leave
Galindo out there in the cold, bearing the brunt for all of
them. I think they all owe Galindo flowers and a public
thank-you.
For the most part, the site has had little controversy. The
only real concern to date came in late 1998, when the great
Canadian champion Brian Orser was outed by a vengeful ex.
Although the news was all over the Canadian papers and a
matter of public record, a few fans contacted me privately
asking that I leave him off the site, since he was outed
against his will (and was clearly pained about it).
If Rainbow Ice were an accountable news source, I would have
kept Orser on the site, with apologies to the offended. But
it's just my own private kingdom. I had mixed feelings about
the issue. I was deeply frustrated by what I still think of as
Orser's internalized homophobia.
On the other hand, he is the one person whose artistry first
drew me to this sport, and he is universally respected as a
man of true goodness and kindness. And my site isn't intended
to hurt anyone. So, I took Orser off. Out of sentiment alone,
not in accordance with any journalistic standards. I put him
back on when he made his first public statement owning his
gayness.
The response from readers has been very positive. Along the
lines of "it's about time there was a site like
this." I've gotten a couple of people saying they think
it's bad for the sport to discuss gay issues, but I think
that's happened exactly twice, and the people were speaking in
good faith. Both times, I responded in a polite, friendly way,
explaining why I put up the site.
Mostly, fans seem happy to be able to point to my site when
the millionth clueless person asks, "Is such-and-such
skater gay?"
Ultimately, I maintain this site for skaters and fans who love
the sport as I do, and hunger for an understanding of its LGBT
history and culture -- perhaps with an eye to where they might
belong within it. I maintain it for the heroes in the
International Gay Figure Skating Union, who celebrate from
within an imperfect world and an imperfect sport.
Sadly, I maintain it in honor of the many current and former
skaters whose careers and sometimes lives have been damaged by
homophobia. And for the astonishing young skaters coming of
age now, who take being out for granted as much as the
learning of their jumps and spins.
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| Lorrie says . . .
Who are
your favorite figure skaters of all-time and why?
Male: Brian Orser. His tangy sense of timing, the
spring in his double axel, the way he spots mid-jump, the
heartbreaking spitcurl over one eye. This is what
interested me in figure skating in the first place.
Female: Michelle Kwan, of course. Her princess
image is so strong in the public mind that people forget
her range. She has been a hard-chinned jock, an androgyne
(Peter Pan), a cross-dresser (Mulan), an ingénue, a
tragic heroine, a flamenco dancer, a mermaid. Her décolletage
is as flawless as her change-edge spiral. Her sense of
scholarship as keen as her muscle memory. And she has yet
to make a P.R. error, despite being surrounded (and
doubtless provoked) by infinite numbers of clueless and
even rude reporters or officials.
Which skaters have the best on-ice fashion sense?
Takeshi Honda, Japanese champion. Last season, he
wore a black shirt with thin red ribbons across his chest,
like a finely packaged Japanese gift.
Toller Cranston, if you're into over-the-top.
Master of the sweeping fur coat with many tails, of the
cloak-and-boots look, of V-slits open to the navel.
Definitely not for everybody, though.
Elvis Stojko. Many fans, including me, have a soft
spot for the leather and studs get-up he wore for the 1994
Olympic short program to "Frogs in Space." It
looks just like he's hitting the leather bars on a
Saturday night (although he's straight). Furthermore: his
mom made it for him. This is the same mom who has another
son she named "Attila."
Brian Orser -- off the ice. Sleek top-of-the-line
tailoring.
Rudy Galindo. His costume for his Village People
medley got funnier and funnier. He started out with a
patriotic flag-motif tank top. Then it acquired sequins.
He gradually added arm bands around each bicep. Never let
the homophobes get too comfortable! Plus, how can you not
love his "Studio 54" orange pants with the
sparkly star over his crotch and one star on each buttock?
Or his black satin robe with "R-U-D-Y" spelled
out in sequins? Galindo sketches out many of his costumes
himself, in crayons. Rudy, I wanna go clubbing with you!
Kurt Browning. It is not clear whether he actually
has a fashion sense, or if he's just so attractive that
everything looks good on him. In fact, he has been known
to skate wearing whatever laundry he found in his
suitcase. But he did an unforgettably sexy program to
"Lightning Crashes" in which he wore an
unbuttoned white shirt over a white undershirt, and began
the program by wearily, beautifully pulling off an
unknotted necktie. Be warned: you can look, but not touch.
He's straight. I swear. Sorry to deliver the bad news.
The most beautiful men's costume I ever saw was on Michael
Chack, 1993 U.S. bronze medalist, for a tango program.
He wore a lovingly tailored dark burgundy bolero jacket
over high-waisted black pants that had two-inch-long
horizontal metal bars running down the outside of each
pants leg.
Which skaters need fashion help?
Alexei Urmanov does not need help, and should not
change anything. But he is definitely too much for the
weak constitutions of the American audience. "Ruffle
Boy" was extreme as an eligible skater, but now that
he's pro, he's gone truly wild. Hats with high feathers;
18-feet-long red capes; magic wands.
American Shepherd Clark needs to be saved from
himself. This professional jewelry-maker created a costume
for himself last year that was encrusted with $100,000
worth of Herkimer "diamonds." The costume had
its own press release.
Philippe Candeloro. It would be kind of him to keep
his clothes on, to forego the backless white vests, and to
invest in pants that don't sag at the crotch. Meow!
Russians in white pants. It is a common belief
among American skating fans that the Russian skating
federation must have attended a close-out sale on
poor-quality white lycra eight years ago. A number of
Russian men have skated in white pants that are not
adequately opaque. You might think this sounds
titillating, but when you see it, it's just embarrassing.
If you were czar of skating, what changes to the sport
would you institute?
1. Women can wear pants or unitards in competition.
2. Men can wear tights or skirts in competition.
3. Same-sex pairs and dance allowed.
4. No vocal music permitted in competition.
5. Both male and female single skaters would have equal
requirements: men must be able to do spirals, and layback
spins would be optional for both genders. (Currently, only
women are required to do spirals and layback spins in the
short program, because they are considered
"feminine" moves for some reason.)
6. Mandatory AIDS and sexual orientation education for all
USFSA skaters.
7. Mandatory sensitivity training on those issues for all
PSA coaches.
8. USFSA-subsidized counseling available to skaters.
9. More USFSA support of individual skaters' training
funds.
10. A return from the current, mathematically corrupt
"OBO" scoring system to the previous,
mathematically fair "majority ordinal" system.
(OK, I realize nobody on Outsports is likely to care about
this one. :-) But it really rankles with me!)
Lorrie
would love to hear from you. E-mail her.
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