Juwan J. Holmes

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At least 6 out athletes are representing the United States at the 2022 Winter Olympics

The 2022 Winter Olympics start this week, and there will be a minimum of 34 athletes competing in nine different sports over the three week-long festivities in Beijing, China that are part of the LGBTQ community. That’s the most ever in Winter Olympics history, beating the 15 out athletes recorded at the 2018 Games.

Team USA will have six out athletes among their 222 named squad members, including three on the figure skating team. They will send the second most out athletes to the Winter Olympics, following Canada with 10.

The athletes are included in an ongoing list being compiled by LGBTQ sports site Outsports, which reported at the end of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo just months ago that there were 186 out athletes that participated in those Games.

Out of the 34 known to be part of the LGBTQ community and competing in Beijing starting this week, 11 are men — the most, since there hadn’t been any men that competed while out at the Winter Olympics prior to Gus Kenworthy, Adam Rippon, and Eric Radford in 2018. 22 of the out competitors are women, and one — Timothy LeDuc — is non-binary.

Kenworthy and Radford are returning for their second straight Games while out, in addition to out athletes Brittany Bowe, Belle Brockhoff, Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, Kim Meylemans, Sarka Pancochova,  and Ireen Wüst, who are also returning for yet another Olympics. Rippon and Hendrikx — who competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada — are returning as coaches.

Team USA’s out athletes will include LeDuc, Jason Brown, and reserve member Amber Glenn on the figure skating squad. Alex Carpenter will compete in ice hockey, Andrew Blaser in skeleton ice skating, and Bowe in speedskating.

Bowe became the first out athlete to earn a roster spot to compete for Team USA in the Olympics’ 109 scheduled events in the upcoming Games. She will compete in the 500 and 1000-meter ice speed skating competitions, after giving up the 500-meter ice speed skating spot she initially qualified for in favor of her friend and teammate, Erin Jackson. Now they will both race in the 500-meter for Team USA.

The Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing from February 2 to February 20, 2022, with the opening ceremony being held on February 4 and the closing on February 20. The first medals for the competitions in the 15 disciplines scheduled for the Olympics will be awarded on February 5. Citing the pandemic, organizers plan for audiences to only consist of invited individuals chosen by Olympic organizers, instead of ticket-buying spectators.

Multiple human rights activists and advocacy groups are against holding the upcoming Olympics and other sports events in anti-LGBTQ areas or countries with questionable human rights records. This also includes and the FIFA World Cup scheduled to be held in Qatar later this year and the Gay Games scheduled to be held in Hong Kong in 2023.

Officially, the United States government has enacted a diplomatic boycott of China for the Olympics, meaning they will not send any non-athlete representatives of the country to appear at the Games. Although athletes are allowed to compete as normal, China’s foreign ministry and Chinese media are already accusing Team USA athletes of planning to “sabotage” the Winter Olympics by going as far to “even refuse to take part” in events — proving that political issues will remain an issue at these Games as they did at previous ones.

China considers LGBTQ activists to be political dissidents and subjects them to surveillance, harassment and imprisonment. The country lacks marriage equality as well as LGBTQ non-discrimination protections.

At the Summer Olympics held last year in Tokyo, the United States finished with the most medals in the end, but “Team LGBTQ,” as the out athletes competing have been dubbed, earned 56 medals between them. That would have put them in sixth as an official Olympic Team.

That means Team LGBTQ had more medals than 200 Olympic squads that went to Tokyo. That was despite the exclusion of several out athletes from certain sports that excluded several athletes that largely excluded gender diverse athletes or those with differences in sex development (DSD).

In November, the International Olympic Committee released new guidelines for transgender participation in their sports that activists and athletes alike are hailing as a massive victory for trans equality.

Those principles – developed after two years of consultations with over 250 athletes and other “concerned stakeholders” – include inclusion, prevention of harm, non-discrimination, right to privacy, and – perhaps most notably – no presumption of advantage. However, they are not binding across the entire Olympic body.

“No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged, or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status,” it says, adding that no athlete should be deemed as having an unfair advantage unless “robust and peer reviewed research” finds otherwise.

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Gay historian files lawsuit against Trump fans over “attack” of Biden campaign bus

Civil rights organizations have filed two lawsuits in federal court against dozens of individuals for harassing and “ambushing” a Biden-Harris campaign bus in October. They are also suing the San Marcos Police Department, City Marshal’s Service, and the Director of Public Safety “who turned a blind eye to the attack.”

They are working with four individuals who were in or by the bus as named plaintiffs. One name plaintiff is Dr. Eric Cervini, an out historian and author of the book The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, which was chosen as a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History.

With his last name coming first in alphabetical order among his co-plaintiffs, Cervini is the first name on all legal paperwork and the lawsuits are legally known as Cervini v. Cisneros and Cervini v. Stapps.

“Everyone on the campaign bus was doing what good citizens of any political party should do — engaging in the electoral process,” Cervini said in a statement. “The intimidation and harassment we experienced is unacceptable, and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen in future elections.”

The non-profit pro-democracy group Protect Democracy announced that they are bringing the lawsuit alongside the Texas Civil Rights Project and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. The four plaintiffs they are representing are Cervini, Wendy Davis, David Gins, and Timothy Holloway. Davis and Gins were passengers, Holloway was driving, and Cervini was driving alongside the bus.

“We filed this lawsuit because everyone should be able to engage in peaceful political activity free from fear, intimidation, or threats of violence,” Davis stated with the announcement.

The bus was traveling to Austin from San Antonio for a last-minute campaign stop on October 30, a week before the election concluded. The Biden-Harris campaign had hoped to sway voters in the Lone Star State after polling had showed that the ticket had better chances at winning the state in the election than previously believed.

The campaign bus, only carrying campaign staff and not the then-candidates, was then stopped outside of San Marcos, Texas, by a group of vehicles on Interstate 35. That led to a blockade by pro-Trump demonstrators and a confrontation “well beyond safe limits,” said Texas Rep. Sheryl Cole (D).

Cervini tweeted at the time, “These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road. They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car.”

He added, “The police refused to help. When I flagged down one officer, he said his hands were tied: ‘not my jurisdiction.’ He was wearing a blue stripe bandana.

“…As a historian who studied the rise of the Third Reich, I can tell you: this is how a democracy dies,” he said.

The Daily Beast reported that staffers saw the swarm of demonstrators (by car and truck) surround the bus and were either trying to prevent it from proceeding, or lead it off the road. The bus and accompanying vehicles were forced to park, and the pro-Trump demonstrators circled it with their cars, bullhorns, and signs. At least one collision occurred during the incident, which was captured on video.

The convoy of demonstrators eventually left, but the police made no arrests, and Texas Democrats and the Biden-Harris campaign cancelled multiple events that weekend.

Right before those events, the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., released a video encouraging Trump supporters in Texas to attend events that then-Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was at.

“It’d be great if you guys would all get together, head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome,” he said.

Then-President Donald Trump retweeted video of part of the incident the day after and said, “I LOVE TEXAS!”

The state of Texas ended up giving its 38 electoral votes to Donald Trump, as the then-President took approximately 52 percent of the state’s popular vote, and Biden earned just under 47 percent.

Joe Biden would still win the presidential election without Texas, although Trump would not concede and instead attempted to overturn the election results. That culminated in a pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in attempts to prevent certification of the election — although their efforts ultimately failed and the election was certified.