Pooh bear gay pride pin
So what exactly is male figure skating - which has the potential to be a gay haven in the world of sports - so afraid of?Īnd yet, of course, there are still boys - and by the looks of them, they’re good. One pump-up video montage at nationals showed clip after clip of top male skaters performing one enormous jump after another, but depicted Rudy Galindo crossing himself and Johnny Weir bursting into tears. They are dismissed in countless subtle ways. Boitano's enough of an established legend to be on the safe side, but it seems that in general, gay skaters are just a tad too implicating of the male skaters around them to be seriously endorsed. Olympic Delegation to Sochi, he announced that he, too, was gay. And last month, after 1988 gold medalist Brian Boitano was named to the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame last year after having been rejected three times, his sexuality was not mentioned during the ceremony.Ī decade later, skater Johnny Weir brought exquisite technical and artistic performances on the ice, but he also brought a reality-television show, a pop song (“ Dirty Love”), and an outspoken diva-worship of Lady Gaga a word often used to describe him was " flamboyant," despite the fact that, until 2011, he kept his sexuality private. When he was finally inducted into the U.S. nationals he skated last in his group (a position that made it harder for the judges to artificially deflate his scores), and to everyone's surprise, he won, becoming the first out national champion. Galindo came out publicly a few weeks before the 1996 U.S. There's Rudy Galindo, a ready-made hard-knock story who grew up in a trailer, abused alcohol and drugs, and lost two coaches and a brother to AIDS. It's not that skating hasn't had out gay athletes. A figure skater can never quite outskate the judges' opinion of him, and judges and institutions, it turns out, are notoriously conservative - as some would say, "family-friendly." At the National Championships, which took place this January in Boston, a phrase I heard often was "don't ask, don't tell." Most male skaters and officials are committed to keeping their sport in the closet, whether that means choosing "masculine" music, hinting about a girlfriend, or outright denying any connection to homosexuality. To insiders, though, it's no surprise that skaters are reluctant to speak out on LGBT rights, let alone come out themselves. You can’t tell me that if Jeremy Abbott came out as gay that it would affect his standing in the skating world.” I don’t understand this impulse, particularly from figure skaters, to hide their sexuality. I have a hard time believing that figure skating is a particularly homophobic sport. One of the group's representatives, who asked to not be named, tells me, “Everyone assumes all male skaters are gay. Men’s Heterosexual Figure Skating Team." The direct action group Queer Nation has recently protested figure skaters Brian Boitano and Johnny Weir for not speaking up against Russia’s anti-gay laws. To outsiders, men's figure skating is widely perceived as the Gayest Sport Ever, the butt of endless jokes - consider last weekend's SNL cold open about the “ U.S. Later, when I pass him in the hallway, he apologizes twice. Abbott just happened to come up with a particularly inept metaphor. (“I’m not going to go into somebody’s house and be like, “Um, the way you decorate is hideous.”) A bunch of athletes had been cornered on the topic, and the less media-savvy skaters hadn't yet mastered the art of expressing compassion while sidestepping responsibility. He's 28 years old, planning to retire at the end of the season and cautious he was criticized last year for comparing Russia's laws - which have motivated the rape, torture, and murder of gay men and women - to bad interior design. Figure Skating Championships, which serve as an unofficial qualifier for the Olympic team, and Abbott's a favorite.
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Then - "I'm going to walk away from that one." "You don't have to answer that," the handler reassures him.Ībbott takes in a breath, glances down. Figure Skating (USFS) handler who's standing nearby.
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He shrugs a little and glances over at the U.S. When I ask figure skater Jeremy Abbott how athletes should respond to Russia's anti-gay laws, his eyes widen.