In 1982, soon after the first Gay Games, 'West Hollywood Swim Club,' as it was known then, registered as the first openl | dG1fdVpqVEtwZ1pHdDg
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00:00And I remember going to the blocks and the guys next to us saying that's the
00:06fag team. And I turned to the relay and I said we are going to crush them.
00:21And we did.
00:25We started in response to a certain amount of homophobia and the empowerment
00:34that comes from athletics and especially gay men not being seen as athletes back
00:39in 1982. And the whole idea back then is if you were gay you were very feminine
00:45you didn't like to do sports so this changed the norm. I mean no one could
00:50imagine there were athletes that were gay. By going to these straight swim
00:59meets as a known gay team and out gay team and winning it was empowering. We
01:06were discovering ourselves and what our what our power was.
01:12We became a family.
01:25The team was created in 82. AIDS surfaced in 82. At one point in time there was a
01:37funeral every week. They thought if you were gay you probably had AIDS and if
01:41you had AIDS you were gonna infect everybody. We couldn't even get a
01:44swimming pool. People were afraid that if you swam in the pool that you could get
01:48it. When they found out it was a gay team and they started breaking in to our cars
01:53at the gay games in New York they put so much chlorine in the water it was
01:57actually painful. Swimming helped because in a way it was a distraction. It was you
02:04knew you could swim. If you could swim you could live. Or at least you were
02:10alive for that moment.
02:14We're engaged. I proposed. He said yes. There's always a group from every
02:21generation that sticks. The team is solid that way and the team serves a purpose
02:26for different reasons for different people.
02:31Yeah swimming was my life savior.
02:40you