\u201cBeing gay isn\u2019t what defines me, but it\u2019s a big part of who I am and I like to talk about my coming out because that\u2019s when I started to own who I was as a person,\u201d said Rippon, who spoke to TeamUSA.org on the topic in honor of June\u2019s LGBTQ Pride Month. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s important, not the being gay part but at some point \u2014 gay or straight \u2014 you need to own who you are. You can\u2019t be afraid of who you are or else you\u2019re afraid of your own potential, and if you don\u2019t own who you are then you can\u2019t grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came out was when I was able to breathe. When everyone knew, I didn\u2019t feel like I was hiding anything. I didn\u2019t feel like I was putting on a show. I was being me and it was easy. It was a lot easier to be me than to be who I thought I was supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In another interview, which I can’t find again now, he relates how, having failed to qualify in prior Olympics, he became determined to seek out and deal with anything within himself that was holding him back, keeping him from finding and owning his place of strength. What he eventually figured out was it was the closet that was playing a big part in keeping him from getting there, and that when he came out, it was not only liberating, it allowed him to grow as an athlete, find his strength.\u00a0 And he made it to the Olympics. And now he’s a medal winner.<\/p>\n
All my life I have watched the closet suffocating people. Good people. Decent, loving, hard working, beautiful people. This is truth: the closet is no sanctuary. It is a prison. Maybe now is not the time for you to come out. But for you to be everything you can be, that time must eventually come. Find a way to make it happen. Don’t accept the half of a life in exchange for security. The security of the closet is an illusion, and we only get one life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They’re calling him and Gus Kenworthy the first openly gay U.S. athletes to compete.\u00a0 Actually according to Smithsonian Magazine that honor belongs to Robert Dover representing the United States in 2004 in the equestrian events. The first out gay athlete to compete in the Olympics was\u00a0English figure skater John Curry, and he did not come out voluntarily, but was cornered by a hostile press about his sexual orientation after his win.\u00a0 He acknowledged it, and later gave the traditional victory performance, which allows the media to call him the first out Olympian.\u00a0 But he operative word here is ‘openly’, as opposed to ‘outed’. In fact Lots of gay athletes have competed at the Olympics. But fear of hostility from officials and judges, both at the Olympics and in their home countries, kept them closeted.<\/p>\n
And it still does for many. Already I’m hearing stories about closeted athletes confiding in Rippon and Kenworthy. So it goes. Yes, it’s progress. Yes, every tiny little inch of that progress, every tiny little baby step forward, comes with a torrent of pain stabbing at beautiful hearts that never deserved any of it.<\/p>\n
Someday…someday…we will all shine…<\/p>\n
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