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Olympians Adam Rippon & Gus Kenworthy: Coming Out Made Us Better Athletes

U.S. Olympians Adam Rippon (L) and Gus Kenworthy (R)

In an interview with The Washington Post, freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy and figure skater Adam Rippon shared their thoughts on being the first two out male Winter Olympians and how it affected not only themselves but other athletes.

Both acknowledged that one byproduct of their openness about being gay was the encounters with closeted athletes and coaches who thanked them for the representation.

Kenworthy said two athletes and a coach approached him while Rippon spoke of a coach did the same.

The duo, who became friends thanks to their shared status as “America’s gay Olympians,” also noted the enormous fear and energy that being closeted took from each of their lives.

Said Rippon, “I think you spend so much time worrying about what other people think about, that you realize that you had all of this extra energy that you didn’t need to be using. And, you know, I think straight people never have this experience of coming out. And it’s such a life-changing moment that you become so strong. I gained so much power and strength from that moment.”

“And I agree with what he said about it being effortless,” Kenworthy added, “because when I was in the closet, it was so [pause] much [pause] effort to stay in the closet and constantly worrying, and fearing I was going to fall asleep before the other guys on my team and say something in my sleep, or anything. I was just, all the time, always nervous that I was going to out myself, that someone was going to find out, and it was this horrible, horrible thing. And now that I’m out, and I realize how great it is, and I’m just getting to enjoy my life, I feel like I just feel free and liberated and I’m competing better, interviews, anything, I just get to be myself, and it’s a strange thing to be thanked for that, but it’s also amazing.”

The two athletes also agreed that they felt the need to be at the top of their respective sports before they could come out in that being “the best” meant haters couldn’t throw shade.

“For myself,” Kenworthy said, “when I came out [in 2015], I felt like I needed to be the best, because that was what I thought it would take to be accepted. No one can talk s— on you if you’re the No. 1 ranked in the world, and so that’s what my whole thing was, and so I made sure that the season before I came out, I was the No. 1-ranked guy in the world, and that was how I wanted to come out. Because I felt like, ‘You can’t argue with that.’ But in the end, no one was trying to argue with it anyway.”

“I actually feel exactly the same,” Rippon said, “where I made sure that when I came out, I was skating very well, so that I would be taken seriously. And after I came out, I won my national title.”

Truly, Rippon and Kenworthy were taken very seriously in their sports.

And regarding the “gay Olympian” label? Rippon summed it all up thusly:

“I think, at the end of the day, that we’re just Olympians. And I think we’re ‘gay Olympians,’ and the next gay Olympians will just be called Olympians, and I think that’s what we really hope, that it won’t be a story.”

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Mississippi: City Council Denies Pride Parade Permit With No Reason Given

The LGBT community of Starkville, Mississippi, was informed last week that an application for a permit to organize what would have been the town’s first Pride parade was denied after a 4-3 vote by the town’s aldermen.

To add to their frustration, the organizers weren’t given a reason for the denial. Three of the aldermen who voted against the permit left through the back entrance.

At the city council meeting, 16 people showed up to support the parade, only two spoke against it. One of the naysayers told the city council a Pride parade would turn the town into “a Sin City.”

Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill denounced the decision saying in a statement it sent a message that the small college town is not “inclusive.” The mayor also pointed out that Oxford, Mississippi, where the University of Mississippi is based, has held gay pride parades for several years.

(source)

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News Round-Up: February 26, 2018

Tyson Beckford

Some news items you might have missed:

• Supermodel Tyson Beckford does “slow Monday” a whole lot better than I do.

• Australia’s new Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack once warned “sordid homosexuals” could wipe out humanity. He says he’s grown since those statements, but has he?

• Openly bisexual high school senior at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Emma González, who has become one of the most prominent voices calling for gun control legislation, has amassed over a million Twitter followers since the gun massacre. It’s worth noting the NRA only has 588K Twitter followers.

• The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision by the Arizona Supreme Court that recognized a woman as the legal parent of a child she and her same-sex spouse conceived through assisted reproduction.

• Donald Trump wants his longtime personal pilot John Dunkin to run the multi-billion dollar Federal Aviation Administration.

• Check out director Jake Wilson’s “boy version” of Hayley Kiyoko’s latest single, “Curious.” Featuring dancer/model Donald Romain and blond bear actor Tyler Kimball, the video flips the lesbian script of the original video and gives us serious gay party flirtation.

I’m bouncing to the track, and the two men are woofilicous 🙂

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Pentagon Confirms 1st Transgender Recruit Has Signed Contract To Join Military Since Judge Ruled Against Trans Ban

The Pentagon has confirmed that the first transgender person has signed a contract to join the US military, a development made possible after a federal judge ruled that the military must accept transgender recruits.

CNN reports:

“The Department of Defense confirms that as of February 23, 2018, there is one transgender individual under contract for service in the US Military,” Maj. Dave Eastburn told CNN.

The individual has met all the standards for serving in the military and signed a contract but has not yet begun basic training.

As you may recall, Trump surprised many last summer when he tweeted, “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”

Trump went on to blame “the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail” for the reasoning behind his decision.

It was later revealed he had not consulted with the heads of our armed forces.

This past Friday, Defense Secretary Mattis delivered his recommendations to the President regarding the future of transgender service members.

“We are waiting for the President to make a decision based on the Secretary’s recommendation,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning told reporters Monday.

Earlier today I reported that several civil rights groups ran a full-page ad in USA Today calling on Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to “not to put their politics ahead of our troops” and reverse the transgender military ban.

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SCOTUS Refuses To Hear DACA Appeal By Trump Administration

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt Donald Trump a serious setback today by declining to take up the administration’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that requires the government to keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program going.

From NBC News:

Under a lower court order that remains in effect, the Department of Homeland Security must continue to accept renewal applications from the roughly 700,000 young people who are currently enrolled in the program, known as DACA. The administration had intended to shut the program down by March 5, but that deadline is now largely meaningless.

In a brief order, the court said simply, “It is assumed the court of appeals will act expeditiously to decide this case.”

Monday’s denial also gives Congress more time to come up with a legislative solution, though repeated bipartisan efforts have failed so far.

At a White House meeting with governors from around the coutry, President Donald Trump said after the court’s decision, “We’d like to help DACA” and criticized the lower court.

The Supreme Court’s denial Monday was expected, because the justices rarely accept appeals asking them to bypass the lower courts.

The DACA program allows children of illegal immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” to remain in the U.S. if they were under 16 when their parents brought them to the U.S. and if they arrived by 2007.

DACA status is given to those who pass a background check, have no prior illegal history and have stayed in school or have current employment. Each “dreamer” must renew their status every two years.

As Pete Williams of NBC News explains below this doesn’t mean the case can’t make it to SCOTUS, only that SCOTUS wants to see the case make it’s way through the regular course of appeals.

At this date, even if the Trump administration took the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the case wouldn’t possibly be heard at SCOTUS until this fall at the earliest.

Of course, Congress could choose to act legislatively on the issue, but who knows if that will happen?

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Trump Says He’d Have Run Into School Shooting “Even If I Didn’t Have A Weapon”

Speaking to the nation’s governors today about the deputy sheriff who failed to intervene during the gun massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School, Donald Trump said, “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon.”

This would be the same Donald Trump who dodged the Vietnam draft five times claiming he had “bone spurs” in one of his feet (he can’t seem to remember which foot).

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Six Years Ago Today

Trayvon Martin (L) and George Zimmerman (R)

Six years ago today, unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 28-year-old George Zimmerman in Florida.

At the time, President Obama’s statement – “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago” – was deemed “divisive” by the conservative right.

Now look what we have in the White House.

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Federal Appeals Court Rules Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Bans Anti-Gay Discrimination In Workplace

In a huge win for the LGBTQ community, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans anti-gay discrimination.

The case examined whether Donald Zarda, a now-deceased skydiver who alleged he was fired from Altitude Express for being gay, could sue under existing civil rights law because sexual-orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination.

From Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed:

The Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled Monday, “We now hold that sexual orientation discrimination constitutes a form of discrimination ‘because of . . . sex,’ in violation of Title VII.” In doing so, the court overruled a lower court — and a precedent from two previous court cases — and remanded the case to be litigated in light of their reading of Title VII.

The decision holds national implications due to its high tier in the judicial system, and because it’s seen as a litmus test of the Trump administration’s ability — or inability — to curb LGBT rights through court activism. The Justice Department had injected itself into the case even though it wasn’t a party to the lawsuit and doesn’t normally involve itself in private employment disputes.

“Sexual orientation is a function of sex and, by extension, sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination,” the majority wrote.

In reaching its decision Monday, the court pointed out that anti-gay discrimination would not exist “but for” a person’s sex. That is to say, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals would not experience this type of unequal treatment had been born a different gender, or were attracted to a different sex.

Robert A. Katzmann, the 2nd Circuit’s chief judge who authored the majority ruling, was joined by nine other judges while three judges dissented.

This ruling is also a blow to the Trump administration which was not a party to the case.

The Justice Department sent Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hashim Mooppan to take part in oral arguments in September arguing that despite Title VII employers should be able to fire workers for being gay.

Zarda had apparently told a female student as they prepared for a sky-diving jump that he was “100 percent gay” in an attempt to make the woman less anxious about the close physical contact involved in being strapped to her instructor.

The woman’s boyfriend complained to the school about the encounter, and that led to Zarda’s dismissal.

This ruling now allows Zarda’s estate to file a discrimination lawsuit against Altitude Express.

The case was heard by all 13 eligible judges of the 2nd Circuit, known as an en banc hearing, meaning the only option for left for the haters is to head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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USA Today Ad Features Bipartisan Support For Transgender Soldiers

From the Human Rights Campaign:

Today, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, OutServe-SLDN, American Military Partner Association, and Gender Justice League published a full-page USA Today ad featuring leading military, national security and bipartisan officials who agree with the majority of Americans that the Trump-Pence Administration’s ban on transgender troops is wrong and hurts military readiness. The ad encourages the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Trump-Pence Administration’s effort to ban up to 15,000 active duty transgender troops to call the White House and demand they put our military readiness and brave servicemembers ahead of politics.

The advertisement reads, “Military leaders, national security officials, bipartisan lawmakers in Congress and a majority of Americans oppose the Trump-Pence ban on transgender troops, which would hurt military readiness. Tell Donald Trump and Mike Pence not to put their politics ahead of our troops. Call the White House: 202-456-1414.”

Making clear the bipartisan opposition to the ban, the ad features quotes from Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Richard Shelby (R-AL); Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford; Former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus; Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen; Former Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning; Former Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James; and General Martin Dempsey.

Bolding is mine.

As I reported over the weekend, Defense Secretary James Mattis delivered his recommendations on transgender soldiers in the military to Donald Trump on Friday evening. Political insiders say Mattis is expected to support allowing trans soldiers to continue serving in the U.S. armed forces.

One more time – Call the White House at 202-456-1414 and leave a message saying you agree with the majority of Americans that transgender soldiers who are willing and able to serve the country they love should have that right.