Gay/Lesbian Sport Clubs and Events

Abstract

Over the last two decades the founding of sport clubs and organization of sport events specifically for gays and lesbians has increased in the Netherlands and most other western countries. For many policy-makers the popularity of playing sport ‘apart’ seems to be in contradiction to current liberal legislation concerning homosexuality and gay and lesbian rights. Gay/lesbian sport clubs and events like the Gay Games, which took place in Amsterdam in 1998 and Sydney in 2002, raise questions about the social integrative meanings and functions of sport. In this article different, often tenuous and ambiguous, integrative meanings are discussed in relation to mainstream and gay and lesbian sport clubs and events.