Culture

Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon share kiss in defiance of Mike Pence

By Daniel Megarry

12th February 2018

“Eat your heart out, Pence.”

As the first openly gay male athletes from Team USA to make it to the Winter Olympics, freeskier Gus Kenworthy and figure skater Adam Rippon are helping to fly the flag for the LGBTQ community in turbulent times.

During the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea over the weekend, both Gus and Adam posed for a series of cute photos together which were later shared on social media.

“The Opening Ceremony is a wrap and the 2018 Winter Olympic Gaymes are officially under way!” Gus wrote on Instagram.

“I feel incredibly honoured to be here in Korea competing for the US and I’m so proud to be representing the LGBTQ community alongside this amazing guy.”

But he couldn’t end the post without making a sly dig at notoriously anti-gay Vice President Mike Pence.

“Eat your heart out, Pence,” he added.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Be-yOp3BFDx/?hl=en

That message of defiance was solidified in a post on Twitter, where Gus shared an extra two photos from the opening ceremony including one of him planting a kiss on Adam’s cheek.

“We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it,” he wrote.

Considering his terrible track record when it comes to LGBTQ rights, it’s more than understandable that some of the openly gay athletes competing at the Winter Olympics were less than impressed by Mike Pence’s role as leader of the US delegation.

Adam – who became the first ever openly gay man from the United States to qualify for the Winter Olympics earlier this year – had some choice words about Donald Trump’s second in command during a recent interview.

“You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy? I’m not buying it,” Rippon said to USA Today.

“If it were before my event, I would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out of their way to not only show that they aren’t a friend of a gay person but that they think that they’re sick.

“I wouldn’t go out of my way to meet somebody like that.”

Rippon added: “I don’t think he has a real concept of reality. To stand by some of the things that Donald Trump has said and for Mike Pence to say he’s a devout Christian man is completely contradictory.

“If he’s okay with what’s being said about people and Americans and foreigners and about different countries that are being called ‘shitholes,’ I think he should really go to church.”