News
Louganis: gay MSNBC anchor should not have hosted Russia pageant
Retired Olympian says Thomas Roberts a ‘feather in Putin’s cap’
Retired Olympian Greg Louganis on Friday, Dec. 13, took part in a Russia briefing on Capitol Hill. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Retired Olympic diver Greg Louganis on Friday said he disagrees with gay MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts and singer Elton John’s decisions to host the Miss Universe 2013 pageant and perform in Russia because of the country’s LGBT rights record.
“I don’t agree with it,” Louganis told the Washington Blade during an interview after he took part in a Russia briefing on Capitol Hill organized by Human Rights First. “It just seems like all they’re doing is lending credibility to what’s going on there because they’re not going to be reporting on the crimes and the horrors that are happening there. You’re going to be a feather in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s cap.”
Louganis, who learned he was living with HIV six months before he competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, came out as gay during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1995. He won two gold medals during the Seoul games and in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Louganis described Russia’s LGBT rights record that includes a law that bans gay propaganda to minors as “very, very disturbing” during the Capitol Hill briefing in which Anastasia Smirnova and Maria Kozlovskaya of the Russian LGBT Network, Elvina Yuvakaeva and Konstantin Iablotckii of the Russian LGBT Sport Federation and gay Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline also took part. The four-time Olympic gold medalist was unable to compete in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow because the U.S. boycotted them over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year.
“When you’re talking about Olympic boycotts, they hurt the wrong people,” Louganis told the Blade, noting athletes often have a limited amount of time in which they can compete. “You have a window and if that window is taken away from you, you don’t have that opportunity. And I’ve lived that through two boycotts and they truly do hurt the wrong people.”
Iablotckii has invited Louganis to attend the Russian LGBT Sport Federation’s “open games” that are scheduled to take place in Moscow between Feb. 26 and March 2, but the retired Olympic diver said he does not currently have the financial means to travel to the Russian capital. He told the Blade he is not even sure the Russian government would grant him a visa that would allow him to legally enter the country.
“I’d love to be there,” said Louganis.
Louganis spoke with the Blade a week after John blasted Russia’s LGBT rights record during a concert in Moscow.
“You have always embraced me and you have never judged me,” said the gay British singer while on stage. “So I’m deeply saddened and shocked over the current legislation that is now in place against the LGBT community here in Russia.”
Louganis told the Blade he respects John, but questioned the effectiveness of his statement.
“It was skewed in such a way that it really did not help the cause,” said Louganis. “I think it was an attempt, but I don’t know how effective it was.”
Roberts last month co-hosted the Miss Universe pageant 2013 in Moscow with singer Mel B after Andy Cohen said he turned down the request, in part, because “he didn’t feel right as a gay man stepping foot into Russia” as he told E! News.
Masha Gessen, a lesbian Russian American journalist, appeared on the gay MSNBC anchor’s program before he traveled to Moscow. Roberts also interviewed Anton Krasovsky, the former editor-in-chief of a pro-Kremlin television station who said he lost his job in January after he came out during a segment on the gay propaganda law, once he arrived in Russia.
Roberts criticized the aforementioned statute and Russia’s LGBT rights record during a series of pre-pageant interviews with NBC, which co-owns the Miss Universe Organization with Donald Trump, and other media outlets. Neither Roberts nor participants in the Miss Universe 2013 pageant discussed Russia’s LGBT rights record during the broadcast of the event.
“All kids — Russian, American or otherwise — need hope,” wrote Roberts in an MSNBC column that announced his decision to co-host the pageant. “I am a happy, healthy, gainfully employed, educated and married man. And yes, I am gay. These new Russian laws won’t stop Russians from being born LGBT and growing up to identify as such. Russia’s treatment of its LGBT citizens is unacceptable, unrealistic and only promotes homophobia and intolerance for a community that does and will continue to exist.”
Roberts on Dec. 10 moderated a panel on LGBT issues in sports at the United Nations that featured Smirnova, gay former Washington Wizards center Jason Collins, retired tennis champion Martina Navratilova, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic, South African activist Thandeka “Tumi” Mkhuma and intersex advocate Huda Viloria. The event coincided with the 65th anniversary of the ratification of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.
Roberts was unavailable for comment as of deadline.
Iran
Grenell: ‘Real hope’ for gay rights in Iran as result of nationwide protests
Former ambassador to Germany claimed he has sneaked ‘gays and lesbians out of’ country
Richard Grenell, the presidential envoy for special missions of the United States, said on X on Tuesday that he has helped “sneak gays and lesbians out of Iran” and is seeing a change in attitudes in the country.
The post, which now has more than 25,000 likes since its uploading, claims that attitudes toward gays and lesbians are shifting amid massive economic protests across the country.
“For the first time EVER, someone has said ‘I want to wait just a bit,” the former U.S. ambassador to Germany wrote. “There is real hope coming from the inside. I don’t think you can stop this now.”
Grenell has been a longtime supporter of the president.
“Richard Grenell is a fabulous person, A STAR,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before his official appointment to the ambassador role. “He will be someplace, high up! DJT”
Iran, which is experiencing demonstrations across all 31 provinces of the country — including in Tehran, the capital — started as a result of a financial crisis causing the collapse of its national currency. Time magazine credits this uprising after the U.N. re-imposed sanctions in September over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As basic necessities like bread, rice, meat, and medical supplies become increasingly unaffordable to the majority of the more than 90 million people living there, citizens took to the streets to push back against Iran’s theocratic regime.
Grenell, who was made president and executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year by Trump, believes that people in the majority Shiite Muslim country are also beginning to protest human rights abuses.
Iran is among only a handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Virginia
Mark Levine loses race to succeed Adam Ebbin in ‘firehouse’ Democratic primary
State Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker won with 70.6 percent of vote
Gay former Virginia House of Delegates member Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) lost his race to become the Democratic nominee to replace gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) in a Jan. 13 “firehouse” Democratic primary.
Levine finished in second place in the hastily called primary, receiving 807 votes or 17.4 percent. The winner in the four-candidate race, state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, who was endorsed by both Ebbin and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger received 3,281 votes or 70.6 percent.
Ebbin, whose 39th Senate District includes Alexandria and parts of Arlington and Fairfax Counties, announced on Jan. 7 that he was resigning effective Feb. 18, to take a job in the Spanberger administration as senior advisor at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
Results of the Jan. 13 primary, which was called by Democratic Party leaders in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax, show that candidates Charles Sumpter, a World Wildlife Fund director, finished in third place with 321 voters or 6.9 percent; and Amy Jackson, the former Alexandria vice mayor, finished in fourth place with 238 votes or 5.1 percent.
Bennett-Parker, who LGBTQ community advocates consider a committed LGBTQ ally, will now compete as the Democratic nominee in a Feb. 10 special election in which registered voters in the 39th District of all political parties and independents will select Ebbin’s replacement in the state senate.
The Alexandria publication ALX Now reports that local realtor Julie Robben Linebery has been selected by the Alexandria Republican City Committee to be the GOP candidate to compete in the Jan. 10 special election. According to ALX Now, Lineberry was the only application to run in a now cancelled special party caucus type event initially called to select the GOP nominees.
It couldn’t immediately be determined if an independent or other party candidate planned to run in the special election.
Bennett-Parker is considered the strong favorite to win the Feb. 10 special election in the heavily Democratic 39th District, where Democrat Ebbin has served as senator since 2012.
Congress
Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is among those who spoke at an “ICE Out for Good” protest that took place outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s headquarters in D.C. on Tuesday.
The protest took place six days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Good left behind her wife and three children.
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
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Mark Levine loses race to succeed Adam Ebbin in ‘firehouse’ Democratic primary
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