The people announced this month by organizers of the Gay Games and the World Outgames to represent their respective interests in discussions about their plans for 2018 have strong but distinctly different histories with their events.
Both the Federation of Gay Games and the Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association will be represented by their top executive officers: Emy Ritt of Paris and Kurt Dahl of Chicago for the FGG, and Julia Applegate and Wessel van Kampen for GLISA.
The FGG announced its five elected representatives first, and they include three FGG board members: Paul Oostenbrug, a marathon runner from Chicago and long active in Team Chicago; Kelly Stevens, a runner from Seattle who handles Gay Games communications; and Jon Baldan, a Sydney basketball official who handles FGG operations. They are joined by Leigh-Ann Naidoo, who represented South Africa in beach volleyball in the 2004 Summer Olympics and is a Gay Games ambassador; and former FGG board member Martyn Pickup of Berlin.
The representatives from GLISA were announced in a somewhat curious manner: a written statement in which the bulk of the text repeated line-for-line the same text issued by the FGG, differing only in the opening sentence and the boilerplate language at the end.
Vancouver's Thomas K. Dolan, a former co-president of GLISA, will be one of that organization's five elected representatives. Dolan, who specializes in niche marketing, was a key figure in the Montreal split of 2003 that led to the birth of the Outgames as a rejection of the Gay Games formula of sports and culture.
Also representing GLISA will be Lin McDevitt-Pugh of Amsterdam; Sumit Baugh, New Delhi; Kevin Haunui, Wellington, New Zealand; and Gloria Careaga, Mexico City.
McDevitt-Pugh is an Australian native whose consulting firm helps develop nonprofit organizations' networks. She was married to her wife, San Francisco native Martha McDevitt-Pugh, in the Netherlands in 2001.
Careaga, a psychologist who specializes in gender studies, is a secretary-general with the International Gay and Lesbian Association. She was chosen to be a grand marshal for Toronto Pride 2010 but renounced her selection to protest Toronto's decision to exclude the expression "Israeli Apartheid" from inclusion in the parade. That ban was later reversed. Careaga was a member of the conference committee for the inaugural World Outgames in Montreal.
Haunui is the general manager of Funding Information Service in Wellington. He was a spokesman for the successful bid group that won the rights to host the 2011 continental Asia-Pacific Outgames.