The man who is believed to be the first openly gay athlete to represent the United States in the Winter Olympics criticized the White House on Wednesday for tapping Vice President Mike Pence as the head of the American delegation to South Korea for next month’s Games.
‘You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy?’ Adam Rippon, 28, told USA Today on Wednesday.
‘I’m not buying it.’
A spokesperson for Pence denied on Wednesday that the vice president supporters gay conversion therapy.
‘The Vice President is proud to lead the US delegation to the Olympics and support America’s incredible athletes,’ read a statement from Pence’s office.
‘The accusation [that Pence supports conversion therapy] is totally false with no basis in fact.
‘But despite these misinformed claims, the Vice President will be enthusiastically supporting all the US athletes competing next month in Pyeongchang.’
The comments by Rippon were made a day after the American figure skater claimed he wouldn’t go to the White House even if he was invited by President Donald Trump.
Rippon told USA Today on Wednesday that he would prefer not to meet Pence during the traditional meet-and-greet between the athletes and the official delegation in the hours before the opening ceremony.
Adam Rippon (left), 28, the first openly gay American athlete to participate in the Winter Olympic Games, blasted the White House decision to have Vice President Mike Pence (right) lead the US delegation in South Korea next month
The entire premise may be moot considering Rippon may have to miss the meet-and-greet because of a figure skating competition.
Rippon said if it required him to make an extra effort, he would decline a chance to shake hands with the vice president.
‘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,’ Rippon said.
‘I wouldn’t go out of my way to meet somebody like that.’
‘I don’t think he has a real concept of reality,’ Rippon said of Pence.
‘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 “s***holes,” I think he should really go to church.’
Rippon secured his place on Team USA after he finished in fourth place at the US figure skating championships earlier this month. He is seen competing at the national championships in San Jose on January 4, 2018
Rippon said he would consider meeting Pence after the Games are over, though this is considered unlikely since the official delegation would presumably have left South Korea before the Olympics were completed.
‘If I had the chance to meet him afterwards, after I’m finished competing, there might be a possibility to have an open conversation,’ Rippon said.
‘He seems more mild-mannered than Donald Trump.
‘But I don’t think the current administration represents the values that I was taught growing up.
‘Mike Pence doesn’t stand for anything that I really believe in.’
It is safe to assume Rippon is expressing a view widely held among large swaths of the LGBT community.
The vice president has spent his entire political career as a staunch religious conservative who has supported legislation considered by gay rights advocates to be discriminatory.
Pence has opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage and extending protections to those who identify as LGBT.
As governor of Indiana, Pence signed a controversial bill into law that allowed businesses to legally discriminate against homosexuals and transgender individuals.
As to the question of whether Pence ever expressed support for gay conversion therapy – a practice discredited by mainstream medicine which claims to ‘cure’ homosexuals by turning them straight – that matter is up for debate.
In 2000, when Pence ran for Congress, his campaign web site included the following blurb: ‘Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus.
Rippon said if it required him to make an extra effort, he would decline a chance to shake hands with the vice president
‘Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.’
LGBT rights advocates interpreted that statement as signaling support for conversion therapy.
But a spokesperson for Pence, Marc Lotter, told The New York Times said that it was ‘patently false’ to suggest that the vice president supported the practice.
Lotter said Pence advocated for funds to ‘be directed to groups that promoted safe sexual practices.’
Rippon, predictably, had kinder things to say about Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
Before the Sochi Olympics in Russia four years ago, then-President Obama asked openly gay former athletes, including Billie Jean King, Brian Boitano, and Olympic hockey medalist Caitlin Cahow, to stand in the US delegation.
He hit out at Trump during an interview with the BBC, saying that he felt it was his ‘duty’ to turn down any invitation to the Trump White House
The move was made as a symbolic rebuke of Russia under President Vladimir Putin, who has been accused of widespread human rights violations including discrimination against homosexual and transgender people.
Rippon secured his place on Team USA after he finished in fourth place at the US figure skating championships earlier this month.
He hit out at Trump during an interview with the BBC, saying that he felt it was his ‘duty’ to turn down any invitation to the Trump White House.
‘Athletes are given a really special platform. It’s our duty, as athletes, to be role models. I won’t go to the White House,’ he said.
‘Given this platform of being an Olympic athlete, I think it’s really important that we stand up for what we believe in, and we speak out against things that we think are wrong and unjust.’
Celebration: Adam is seen throwing up a high kick after getting awarded an impressive 96.52 on his Short Program performance in San Jose earlier this month
Outlining his reasoning, Adam cited Trump’s rhetoric, but also said he was sure he wouldn’t be welcome anyway.
‘I don’t think somebody like me would be welcome there,’ he said. ‘I know what it’s like to go into a room and feel like you’re not wanted.’
Adam, who will be representing his country this year in the men’s singles at the PyeongChang Games, also singled out Trump’s disrespect of others, saying that it clashed with his own upbringing.
‘If I talked to people the way that President Trump talks to people, my mom would kick my a**,’ he said.
While Adam is the firstly openly gay man to qualify for the Games, his fellow figure skater Johnny Weir came out in 2011, after competing in the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics, having avoided speculation about his sexuality up until that point, refusing to speak out about it until after he finished competing.
He later confirmed he was gay in his 2011 memoir, Welcome to My World.
While he has made history with his qualification, Adam will likely not be the only openly gay athlete on the team by the time the Olympics roll around – nor the only openly gay athlete to preemptively refuse an invite to the Trump White House.
Freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy already had an Olympic slopestyle silver medal under his belt before coming out in 2015 and had even visited the White House after the 2014 Olympics to meet Obama – an experience he called ‘thrilling.’
Looking up: The skater claimed that someone like him ‘wouldn’t be welcome’ at the Trump White House
Joining up: Freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy has also said he would refuse a Trump invitation
Making headlines: Skier Lindsey Vonn also preemtively RSVP’d ‘no’ saying that ‘I don’t think that there are a lot of people currently in our government’ that represent the country well
Gus will find out later this month if he qualifies for the PyeongChang-bound team – and is in a great position for a spot – but claims that he will be giving the next White House trip a miss.
‘I am very proud to represent the U.S. but I don’t stand by (U.S. President Donald) Trump and his cabinet and their policies,’ Gus told Reuters.
‘I do not want to feign approval for policies that are in place and things that are being pushed at the moment, by going. If I was invited I would decline my spot.’
Skier Lindsey Vonn similarly said she would be declining any future invitation, saying that while she will do her best to represent the country well, ‘I don’t think that there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that.’