Fridae

Hong Kong has been listed among 17 other cities as a possible host of the Gay Games 2022. Tel Aviv, Washington D.C., Guadalajara, Cape Town, Denver, Dallas, and Los Angeles are also in the running but Hong Kong is the only Asian city to be nominated as a host.

Out in HK, an LGBT community that organises sports and social activities, has launched the application and will hand in the full bid by the end of November. The Federation will select the 2022 host in October 2017.

The Gay Games was first hosted by San Francisco in 1982 and since then become the largest international sport and cultural gathering for athletes, musicians and artists.

The festival covers 3 themes: sports, arts & culture and human rights. With 10,000 participants and up to 100,000 spectators, Out in HK hope that the games could add HKD 400 million to the city's economy. The next Gay Games will be held in Paris in 2018.

It is also hoped that the Gay Games can be a vehicle for ensuring greater LGBT rights in the region.

Speaking to the Sunday Morning Post, Leviathen Hendricks, a board member and the international development officer for the Federation of Gay Games, said:

"There is certainly an argument, often conjecture about why a particular city has won the bid to host in the past, and some cities have made that argument before "the Gay Games needs to come here because we need to improve LGBT rights in that area" so that could be an element of someone's decision to vote for a particular host, to make a real human rights change in that area."

Dennis Philipse, founder of Out in HK, sees this as a core reason for having the games in the city.

"Hosting the games in Hong Kong will make change because the guy in Starbucks or the taxi driver will have a completely different awareness of the LGBT people," he told the Sunday Morning Post.