The friendship between openly gay Olympians Adam Rippon and Gus Kenworthy has been one of the best things to come out of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, and on Today, the duo spilled about all of their highlights over the past two weeks! Rippon made headlines for taking a stand against Mike Pence, and when asked about his attitude now that the games are over, Rippon, classy as ever, stated:
I feel that Mike Pence doesn’t stand for anything that I was taught when I grew up. And I think that it’s important if you’re given the platform to speak up for those who don’t have a voice. And I was offered a phone call with the vice president that I decided not to take before the Games….I didn’t take the phone call because I needed to focus on the competition.
Kenworthy then acknowledged the importance of his presence at the games, especially his sure-to-be-infamous kiss with his boyfriend on national television:
My boyfriend and I had a kiss at the bottom of the contest and people were like, ‘we get it, we don’t need to see it though. I don’t care what you do it behind closed doors, but don’t put it in my face.’ And it’s kind of like, my entire life – in movies and commercials, in public – everywhere you see straight heterosexual love and that’s completely fine because it’s normal, but us also showing the same type of affection isn’t shoving it in your face. It’s just existing.
The Olympics are viewed by people from all political and religious backgrounds, and the importance of the exposure that Rippon and Kenworthy are providing for the LGBTQ community can truly not be underestimated. They, along with my faux beau Johnny Weir, are making families everywhere rethink what it means to be not just Olympians, but Americans. And in Weir’s case, also how to rock the heck out of a sequenced blazer.
