At its membership meeting in December, the members of Games Berlin voted 16-4 to bid for Outgames 2009. The board and the executive directors were instructed to gather the local, national and international support necessary to reactivate the Outgames bid, which is currently on hold.

In October 2004, Games Berlin invited the two international gay and lesbian sporting bodies, the Federation of Gay Games (FGG) and the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association (GLISA), to meet in Berlin for talks that would clear the path for unified global gay and lesbian games after the two competing events in 2006. GLISA accepted the invitation but the FGG declined. Similar invitations from Munich and Washington, D.C., were also rejected at the annual meeting of the FGG in Cologne. Instead, the FGG announced it will organize an open-invitation conference on the future of gay and lesbian sport in the first half of 2005, but this was seen by Games Berlin and representatives of other influential gay and lesbian sports bodies as a unilateral move without any chance of actually bridging the gap in the sports movement.

“We are disappointed about the rejection of the negotiation proposals and we have lost hope that the FGG is seriously interested in moving towards unity,” said Dagmar Timm, co-executive director of Games Berlin. “All offers for talks were rejected, the site selection process for Gay Games 2010 is continuing as if nothing happened and the FGG doesn’t even mention the name GLISA in any of their letters or releases.”

Timm went on to say: “The FGG is obviously trying to buy time and create facts. It would have been possible to put the site selection process during the negotiations on hold without any problem. To date there are only expressions of interests but no definitive letters of intent. If the FGG is interested in unifying the sports movement and the games, talks need to happen first before the bid selection process continues.”

“The decision of the members of Games Berlin for Outgames 2009 is only the first step to reactivate the Berlin bid,” said Robert Kastl, co-executive director of Games Berlin. The international disputes managed to divide the community in Berlin and the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, consequently withdrew his support for either Gay Games or Outgames until the differences are settled. The financial support for the Gay Games bid was severed. “The gay and lesbian community has to make a clear decision now,” said Kastl, “or Berlin will not get gay and lesbian games in the next 13 years.”