Originally appeared August 8, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.
WHEN A LEAKED MEMO about the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney indicated that the event might be cancelled because of mismanagement and a financial shortfall, there were headlines but not much surprise.
And why should we be surprised? We've seen this before.
We need to think back only as far as last year, when the controversial Millennium March on Washington hovered on the brink of cancellation. To save it, organizers had to scurry to secure an extra $600,000 in last-minute loans from corporate sponsors and individuals.
Most of us also remember when money from the affiliated Millennium Festival went missing - did an insider stuff $500,000 into his or her pockets before he or she left for the night? Or was attendance not as high as organizers thought?
Then there was the 1990 Vancouver games and the 1994 New York games, both of which ended up with deficits. The 1998 Amsterdam games turned out to be a financial disaster, requiring the local government to pony up $2 million so that they could continue.
So now it's Sydney. The gay money curse strikes again.
Trouble is, the curse seems to strike so frequently that many of us have stopped noticing. Who cares if newspapers fold because they lose ad revenue, if vendors are forced to take loans to keep their businesses afloat, or if sports teams are stranded on the other side of the world?
What does it matter if a local government has to bail us out, as long as we get to bask in the gay pride glow we get whenever thousands of us converge together. As long as people have a good time, as long as the community is burnished with an extra polishing of fellow feeling, an event is successful, right?
Wrong.
It is shameful that we refuse to take fiscal responsibility for ourselves, especially now that we are a maturing movement. Perhaps in our movement's childhood and adolescence it was forgivable to live the dream and damn the consequences, but 26 years after Stonewall, we need to think a little first.
If we want to throw a party or put on a competition, we need to pay for it ourselves and not expect others to bail us out. They don't owe us money; they don't owe us in kind donations. The world owes us nothing but rights and respect.
This is important, because the numbers we throw around - $2 million to bail out the Amsterdam games! - represents real money that has an impact on real people. That $2 million could have gone to public transportation, or housing, or health care, or even stayed in tax payers' pockets. Instead, it paid off businesses that would have suffered had they not gotten their expected return. After the Millennium March fiasco, one festival vendor described how he was forced to sell his jeep to pay salaries. Food vendors, it seems, were collectively owed $300,000.
When our special events organizations are not financially responsible, we hurt our supporters - generous individuals, gay and lesbian owned businesses, supportive legislators, friendly corporate sponsors. And when we hurt our supporters, we hurt ourselves.
Why is this happening? Perhaps because our organizations are built on the shoulders of visionaries who dream a world independent of real costs. We depend on people like that; without them, we could never have broken through the brick wall that sealed our closets.
But it is time to silence our inner children who demand extravaganzas and instead cultivate our inner grown-ups, scaling events back to what can be accomplished responsibly. We must hire people who have the experience to manage mammoth, complex events. More, we must take a close look at the events we take for granted and re-evaluate their purpose.
For example, as the world, country by country, is becoming more open to gays and lesbians, we should think about whether we need a Gay Games modeled on the Olympics. Since the Games are more about brotherhood than about international competition (everyone gets a medal, after all), perhaps we should model the Games on the AIDS ride instead, requesting that athletes who wish to participate raise their own funds through local support. Or maybe we should simply have smaller global competitions for sports that are not in the Olympics - like same-sex couple ice skating.
But we also need to ask how necessary it is that we have any national or international gathering that doesn't pay its own way. Once, these events served as proof to the world - and ourselves - that we existed in large numbers. Now they are just places to spend our disposable incomes acquiring rainbow-themed merchandise. Is it possible that these events are financial failures because not enough of us are interested in attending?
It's true that for those newly out or for those living in conservative areas, these gatherings serve to reassure and strengthen. But our local pride events serve the same purpose. Doesn't it make more sense for someone in conservative southern Illinois to seek out a gay presence in Chicago or St. Louis than to travel to Sydney, half a world away?
We must ward off the gay event money curse with fiscal responsibility, experienced management and honest evaluation. We need to play fair with our supporters and sponsors and prove to them that it is worth investing in our movement. It's only sporting.