Author name: communityoflights

This issue is both public and personal for the six openly gay Olympians who will be competing at Sochi. They’ll join 6,000 athletes from 85 countries. Gay rights have taken center stage at Sochi, thanks to Russia’s own targeting of the LGBT community. In June 2013, the Russian government banned dissemination of pro-gay “propaganda” that could be accessible to children. The law’s vagueness, activists note, could prohibit almost any pro-gay expression, such as public statements, rallies, rainbow flags, rainbow nesting dolls, or same-sex hand-holding. Violators can be fined or jailed up to 14 days. Foreigners can be expelled.

At least 35 publicly out gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, pansexual and non-binary athletes will be in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, double the amount who competed in 2018, including the largest share of men. The athletes are competing in nine different sports from Feb. 4-20, including 12 in ice hockey and 10 in figure skating. Of the skaters, eight are men, one is non-binary and one is pansexual. The pansexual athlete, Amber Glenn, is an alternate and is currently not slated to compete. All of the out ice hockey players are women.

Love is love! Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, Elton John and David Furnish, and more famous queer couples have lived out their fairy-tale romances in the public eye. LGBTQ couples do not want to be defined by who they share their bed, their home and their soul. Their choices in life may have been unconventional for some, but that’s their personal choices. LGBTQ individuals want to live responsibly and truthfully without hiding. It’s complicated, because there is a lot of hate in this world, and a lot of good can come from quote-unquote normalizing something for people who don’t see it as normal.

The ‘Dance of the 41’ changed the way that Mexico interpreted gender and sexuality forever. The number 13 is commonly considered unlucky, but in Mexico, the number 41 has been seen as taboo and avoided—at one point the Army left the number out of battalions, hotel and hospital rooms didn’t use it and some even skipped their 41st birthday altogether. The reason has to do with a party held in a secret location in Mexico on November 17, 1901. On that night 41—possibly 42—men gathered under the cover of night to dance together. Though some may not consider this scandalous by today’s standards, fallout from “The Dance of the 41,” as it was called by the press, was controversial enough to change the landscape of sexuality in Mexico.

Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca met in Madrid, in 1923. Along with Luis Buñuel and Pepín Bello, they formed a strong friendship during their student years, living at the Residencia de Estudiantes. The relationship between Dali and Lorca though, has been strongly rumored to be something more than just friendship. It all began when Lorca first saw Dali, and was amazed by his unconventional style of dress, while Dali saw the “poetic phenomenon” Lorca was. Their relationship lasted, with all its ups and downs, until Lorca’s assassination in 1936.